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From the moment Houdini became my idol, I have been fascinated by the ghostbusters capturing the scheming fake psychics. I do not think there are many frauds so cruel as the ones that take advantage of the bereaved thinking that they are in contact with their loved ones. For that I admire the start of “The Awakening,” where a family attempts to hold a seance to communicate with their son who died in the Great War. They take out his picture, a lock of hair and so on, and the poor child appears to be almost present until the great Florence Cathcart pulls back the curtains and reveals some elaborate ropes and a child hiding under a table. London bobbies steam into the room and the jig is up.
That is the only scene I greatly liked. Florence (Rebecca Hall), author of a bestseller exposing ghosts is approached by war traumatized veteran Robert Mallory (Dominic West), who wants her to help him at the ghost clad English countryside boarding school where he teaches. One boy has recently died at the school and the other pupils claim to see his ghost.
The Rockford School is one of those secluded heaps which look to have far more space than they require. Sharp against the skyline, it appears stuck in the Dickens era. This is especially so when the summer holidays render the place completely empty, aside from some skeletal staff who fit into caricatures of haunted house tales. There’s the stammering Mallory himself, who is haunted by the memory of dead comrades. Spir Malcolm McNair (Shaun Dooley), his colleague, is a classic sadistic coward who leaps at every opportunity to beat a boy. The friendly matron Maud Hill (Imelda Staunton) and the creepy groundsman Edward Judd (Joseph Mawle) are the worst. He constantly wanders the woods with a rifle, in a feigned attempt to help. And there is a schoolboy Tom (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), the only student who stays in the school because his parents are faraway in India.
Maud remarks to Florence that she takes no toll on nonsense regarding specters and to say that she has not read her book is ahistorical. Malcolm regales Tom with unmerited contempt regarding an unknown fault, Edward is ominously lurking about, Robert helps Florence set up ghostbusters including trap cameras set to fire, powder for footprints, and some very sensitive measuring thingies. These actions happen in the oppressive manse with a never ending sullen corridors and doors leading to yet more doors. The art direction of the film’s shadowy ghost boy into evaporating affiliation is the only capture that the film was able to achieve.
Although she’s a staunch atheist and does not believe in life after death, Rebecca is nevertheless soon terrified beyond reason by such phenomena as a dollhouse of Rockford School, voice windows of which peek into dolls representing all kind of people on the premises. Stephen Volk’s screenplay and Nick Murphy’s direction, do not make an attempt to clarify these occurrences, or perhaps they do not want to. At the middle of it, my money is now on the brutal teacher Malcolm McNair, who I imagine picked a child’s life to beat out of them and who is n o w attempting to shove the blame onto a ghost. Such an Agatha Christie ensemble makes one never entirely rule out the good hearted matron. The only one who is probably uninvolved is the grounds keeper Judd. He looks to be too guilty. Or rather Florence Cathcart is beginning to lose her mind.
Whatever the outcome is. It is all okay, “The Awakening” is visually great but carries no plot engagement bankable enough, and unfortunately the resolution to the enigma is far too ordinary for my liking. The bigger mystery is, what in God’s name were the English thinking when erecting those spine-chilling stately homes and then actually residing within them?
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