Each year, over 21,000,000 people receive general anesthesia. The vast majority go to sleep peacefully. They remember nothing. 30,000 of these patients are not so fortunate. They find themselves unable to sleep. Trapped in a phenomenon known as Anesthesia Awareness. These victims are completely paralyzed. They cannot scream for help. They are... Awake.
Awake is a medical thriller by director Joby Harold, starring Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, and Terrence Howard. The film was released in 2007 by The Weinstein Company.
Clayton Beresford Jr. (Hayden Christensen) has a lot going for him. He's the heir to a powerful business empire, is obscenely rich, and is engaged to a beautiful, loving woman named Sam (Jessica Alba). However, he has two major problems. The first is that, despite being engaged for six months, he hasn't worked up the nerve to tell his mother that he has been dating her personal assistant behind her back. The second problem is that he has a bad heart... and without a transplant, he could die from a heart attack at any moment.
In one fateful evening, his fortune seems to turn. After finally breaking the news to his none-too-pleased mother, he and Sam elope that night. And then, while the newlywed couple prepare to spend their first night together as husband and wife, his pager goes off... and Clayton finds out that a matching heart has just arrived at the hospital. After they noticeably take their time getting to the hospital, Clayton says goodbye to his new bride and his terrified mother as he's wheeled off to the surgical table.
As the anesthesia sets in, Clayton thinks of Sam as he prepares to drift off to sleep, confident that he's in the capable hands of his surgeon and best friend Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard). As the minutes go by, he jokingly comments the cocktail his stand-in anesthesiologist gave him doesn't seem to be working, but none of the surgical team pays any attention to him. He starts to realize that something has gone horribly wrong when he can feel them prepping the incision area, and his fears are confirmed when Dr. Harper slices his chest open and begins cracking his ribcage. Clayton is still awake. He can see and feel everything. But no one can hear him.
Then, just when he begins to push through the excruciating pain, Clayton hears something that chills him to his very core: his doctors are discussing their plans to kill him by making it look like he received a faulty donor heart. Trapped in his own mind, Clayton futilely screams for help, but to no avail. He's going to die, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
Not to be confused with the TV series Awake (2012), or the 2021 Netflix original sci-fi film.
Awake contains examples of the following:
- Abusive Parents: Clay's father.
- Adventures In Coma Land: While Clayton's doctors perform the surgery and plot his death unaware that he can hear them, Clayton can do nothing but relive his memories that led up to this point, scrutinizing every detail to try to understand what's going on. After the transplant "fails" while he remains hooked to the bypass machine, everything in his dream world grows dimmer and dimmer, until finally fading to pitch black.
- The Alcoholic: Dr. Larry Lupin, the new anesthesiologist brought in for Clay's surgery. Alarmingly, he even has a flask with him while in the operating room. That said, he was not in on the murder plot, being in truth an undercover officer and all.
- And I Must Scream: While the anesthetic keeps Clayton totally paralyzed, he can hear every word spoken by his doctors and can feel every cut of Dr. Harper's scalpel... and the saw used to cut open his sternum.
- Anti-Villain: Jack Harper is the only participant in the murder plot who is genuinely regretful about the whole thing and is reluctant to go through with it in the first place. He turns on Sam at the end.
- Artistic License – Medicine: While the caption card that opens the film isn't a complete misrepresentation of the truth, the statistics that it cites include those who feel any degree of Anesthesia Awareness, including those who merely wake up for a second or two and then quickly fall asleep again, and those who have a vague sensation of feeling the doctors operate on them. The number of people who experience the kind of Anesthesia Awareness that Clayton does here is thought to only number a couple of hundred people, worldwide, every year.
- Big Bad Friend: Dr. Jack Harper, Clayton's Best Friend, plotted with Sam to kill him.
- Billy Needs an Organ: The story is centered around Clayton's need for a new heart, and the plot of his doctors to make it look as though the transplant was a failure. In the end, his mother (who was previously established as a match for his rare blood type), kills herself so that she can give her heart to her son.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Sam who's plotting to have Clayton killed.
- Bittersweet Ending: Clay survives thanks to his mother's Heroic Sacrifice and everyone involved in the murder plot is arrested, with strong implications that justice will be served in the future. On the other hand, Clay has lost his mother, and the love of his life was not only not who he thought she was, she also conspired to have him killed.
- Broken Pedestal: Clay gets this many times throughout the film: he learns that both his close friend Jack and his new wife Sam were in on a plot to kill him to get his money and were engaged in an affair and he remembers that his belated father and namesake was a drug addict who beat his mother and abused him as well.
- Chekhov's Gun: In a brief scene near the beginning of the film, Sam grabs her mail and sticks it in her purse as she and Clayton are on their way out of her apartment. This becomes important later on when Clayton's mother goes through her purse after finding out that the transplant failed, and finds out that not only was Sam living under an assumed identity... but that she used to be a nurse, who worked with Jack Harper in the past.
- Dies Wide Open: After Lilith commits suicide to give her heart to Clay, Dr. Lupin finds her dead in the hospital cafeteria with her eyes wide open when he goes to offer his condolences and check on her after Clay's death.
- Domestic Abuse: Clay's father again.
- Face Death with Dignity: Clay eventually accepts that he's going to die and there's nothing he can do about it, so returns to his apartment in his mind to peacefully wait it out.
- Fan Disservice: Hayden Christensen shirtless? Nice. Hayden Christensen shirtless and having his chest sliced into? Not so nice.
- Foregone Conclusion: Subverted. The film opens with Jack talking about how Clay died during the surgery, so viewers expect the film to have a Downer Ending. As it turns out, Clay ends up clinically dead for a time, but nevertheless survives thanks to his mother.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Towards the end, when Clay is in his mind preparing to die, Clay's father, in the Santa suit, can be briefly seen in the foreground before the last light in the room goes out.
- From Bad to Worse: Clay's realization that he's still conscious is horrifying enough. Then he learns that the surgeons are planning to murder him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Lilith, after figuring everything out, kills herself so her heart can be transplanted to Clay.
- Honey Trap: Sam is revealed to have seduced Clayton in a plot to kill him in surgery to get the insurance money.
- Hospital Hottie: Sam used to be a nurse under Dr. Harper, and to pay off their malpractice lawsuits, she plotted to seduce his rich best friend so they could kill him and get the insurance money.
- Ignored Expert: Dr. Neyer, a renowned cardiologist and close friend of Lilith's offers to perform Clay's heart transplant, especially since neither he nor Lilith trust Jack, citing his previous, open malpractice lawsuits amongst other things. Clay dismisses him, choosing to stay with Jack out of friendship. Once his ghost uncovers the plot to kill him from the beginning and he rewatches the scene when he declined him as a surgeon, he mournfully apologizes to his mother.
- Mama Bear: It is eventually revealed that Lilith murdered her violent husband in order to protect Clay.
- Manipulative Bastard: Sam.
- Meaningful Name: One member of Clayton's surgical team is a young British woman named Penny Carver.
- The Mole Larry Lupin, who pretends to be an annoying, incompetent, drunk of a surgeon, but is really an undercover cop. Jack Harper suspects him and wants to end the plot, but Sam talks him into going through with it.
- My Beloved Smother: Clayton's mother Lilith's over-protective nature is the main reason that he is afraid of telling her about his engagement, as he knows she would never accept Sam. She also tries to get him to drop Jack, his best friend, as his heart surgeon in favor of an acquaintance of hers who is at the top of the field. As it turns out, she was right on both counts.
- Oh, Crap!: Although there's no facial expression to show it due to being paralysed, Clay's tone of voice says it all when he realizes he's still conscious. He reacts similarly when he finds out about the murder plot.
- Organ Theft: Clay and his mother joke about this as a solution to having to wait for his turn on the heart transplant list.Lilith: "I'm serious this time. Let's go to China, try out luck on the black market."Clayton: "Why don't we just go outside, grab some random person, drag him in here and, y'know..."Lilith: "Sounds good to me. Drag 'em in and cut 'em open! Hey, whatever it takes, right?"
- Psychological Thriller: Overlapping with Psychological Horror.
- Shirtless Scene: Clay has a few prior to surgery.
- Starts with Their Funeral / How We Got Here: The film opens with Dr. Harper lamenting the fact that while he has lost patients before, Clayton is the only friend he's ever lost on the surgical table. He then ponders whether Clayton was thinking of "her" that day, before the scene switches to Clayton and his fiance Sam together in his apartment several days before the surgery.
- Suicide by Pills: How Lilith dies, in order to give her heart to Clay.
- Think Happy Thoughts: Clayton tries to cope with the pain of the surgery by thinking of Sam.
- Token Good Teammate: Dr. Larry Lupin, the anesthesiologist. Aside from being an undercover cop, he's the only one who checks on Lilith after Clay's death while the others are covering their tracks.
- Toplessness from the Back / Side Boob: Sam when she's brushing her teeth naked at the start of the movie and later sitting up in bed post-sex in Clayton's memories.
- Uncertain Doom: Jack. It's implied that he is arrested along with the rest of the surgical team save for Larry for their role in Clay's death, but the last we see of him, he's sitting in his locked office as police attempt to unlock his door, seemingly willing (or even content) to accept his fate.
- Villainous Breakdown: When the murder plot is foiled, Sam's façade and demeanour rapidly deteriorate. Especially at the moment when after she tries to ditch him, Jack bluntly warns her that he has proof that proves her involvement in what they did: Sam: I'm just the grieving widow, remember? I didn't do anything wrong.Jack: [He pushes her out of his office and closes the door] Yeah, you did.Sam: No! [He locks the door]Jack: Going to be kind of hard to play a grieving widow with your fingerprints all on the syringe. [He shows her the syringe he used to make Clay's new heart fail]Sam: Jack. Jack, come on. Let me in. [She jostles door knob] Jack. Come on. [Imploring voice] Please? [He coldly looks at her and her tone turns hysterical] Goddamn you. Open the fucking door. OPEN THE DOOR NOW! Jack, please! [pounding] Open the fucking door.Jack: [He takes a picture of her] Bye, Sam.Sam: Jack!
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The fifth member of the surgical team, an anesthesiologist backs out.
- "You Used to Be Better" Speech: Downplayed, but after Dr. Neyer comes in with Lilith's body to transplant her heart into Clay's, he briefly but genuinely says to Jack after sarcastically telling him to leave the operating room, citing how the police were on their way to arrest them all:Dr. Neyer: What the hell happened to you?
