Solstice l The Tattooist | Smart People | Awake | Unearthed

Imagine if you woke up during your murder?

A Scary, Tantalising and Gripping Thriller

Released on DVD
Monday 25th August 2008

Icon Home Entertainment are proud to announce the DVD release of the edge-of-your-seat thriller, ‘Awake’, on Monday 25th August.  Starring two of Hollywood’s sexiest actors - Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen, the film explores the world of anesthesia and corruption.

“Not for the faint hearted – prepare to squirm"
- SHIVERS

All Above Images Are © 2008 Icon Home Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Audio Commentary with writer/director Joby Harold

Deleted Scenes with audio commentary

“Under The Knife & Behind The Camera: The Making of Awake”

Storyboard to Film Comparison

Icon Trailer Reel

Clayton Beresford, Jr. (Hayden Christensen) seems to have it all—a gorgeous fiancée named Samantha Lockwood (Jessica Alba), an adoring mother Lilith (Lena Olin), a thriving business and all the money a young man could ever want. But Clay’s life is far from perfect—his relationship Sam is a secret because she actually works for his overbearing mother and he is in desperate need of a heart transplant.

Jack Harper (Terrence Howard) is Clay’s friend and his cardiologist. Jack was there when Clay first had heart trouble and he helps Clay prepare for the surgery, which will occur as soon as the doctors can find a donor with Clay’s rare blood-type. Jack stresses to Clay that he must live everyday to the fullest, come clean to his mother and marry Sam without further ado.

"Cutting-edge suspense"
- DAILY STAR

When Sam pressures Clay to marry her, he comes clean to his mother. Lilith responds by offering Sam money to stay out of their lives. Clay is furious. He grabs Sam and insists they get married that very night, with Jack by their side as his Best Man. Shortly after the wedding, Clay’s beeper goes off. This can only mean one thing—they found Clay a matching heart donor.

Clay and Sam breeze into the medical centre where they meet Jack and his colleagues, Dr. Putnam (Fisher Stevens) and Nurse Carver (Georgina Chapman). Lilith pushes Clay to use Dr. Neyer (Arliss Howard), who is one of the top cardiologists in the country. But Clay is adamant that Jack perform the transplant and that he trusts him despite several pending malpractice suits. As Clay nervously prepares for surgery, Sam tries to calm him.

Anesthesiologist Dr. Larry Lupin (Christopher McDonald) bolts into the hospital late, explaining that he had been at a wine tasting. Everyone expresses concern at this admission but in the end, they decide to proceed with the operation. Dr. Lupin injects Clay and he gently slips under. At this point, Clay realizes that he can hear the doctors, still prepping him for surgery. As Clay feels Jack’s fingers on his sternum, scalpel in hand, Clay knows he’s in serious trouble.

“Excellent… a reminder of just how gripping
and involving a good thriller can be”
- FILM REVIEW / 4 stars

Clay is experiencing “anesthetic awareness,” where a surgery patient can feel everything being done to him, but cannot move or speak.

Clay can feel everything Jack and his team does to his body and believes he is suspended in a nightmare. He hears conversation that don’t belong and begins to learn that everyone is not who they seem. Clay begins to realize that he was never meant to wake up from this operation.

Through several more revelations, Clay’s heart line reappears on the monitor. Was all of this a dream brought on by the anesthesia? Or did everything Clay hear actually happen? No matter the circumstances, he opens his eyes. He is awake.

	'Awake' - Behind The Scenes While being treated for these symptoms—caused by a kidney stone—writer-director Joby Harold first got the idea for a thriller about, well, pain. “It was just about the most painful experience I could possibly conceive. I was in unimaginable pain for about six hours, to the point where I got very bored of being in pain. My mind began to wander, and I went back to when I was a kid. I thought about my parents, and my wife, and the things I cared about, and in the middle of that, right in the middle, I got sort of an idea, and a light bulb went off.” The idea became the movie AWAKE, a thriller starring Hayden Christensen, Jessica Alba, Terrence Howard and Lena Olin. The film is about a wealthy young man with a bad heart and a complicated love life who, at the beginning of life-saving heart transplant surgery, experiences what is known in the surgical community as “anesthetic awareness”: though paralyzed by drugs, the patient can see, hear and, most horrifically, feel everything happening to his or her self. “Most psychological thrillers are experienced by the audience in a fairly passive way,” says Harold, who makes his feature directorial debut with AWAKE. “The point of AWAKE is to take the audience inside this man’s consciousness while he’s experiencing this unique and horrible event. “In most thrillers,” Harold continues, “the audience sees the main character walking down a hallway and knows that there’s a bad man around the corner, that danger is near. In our film, I’m hoping to make Clay’s experience happen right in the middle of the audiences’ head. We’re trying to make the experience as visceral, as immediate, and as identifiable as possible, so it’s something the audience can actually feel in real time. It will be like a ride. Though the idea of anesthetic awareness is a creepy one, and AWAKE is certainly a thriller, much of Harold’s work as a writer and Jessica Alba’s and Hayden Christensen’s jobs as actors is to frame what happens to Clay in the narrative of a convincing, high-stakes love story. “I think a pretty outstanding element of AWAKE is that even though Hayden’s character goes through this horrific experience, the way he gets through it is basically his love for this girl,” explains Alba. “We all agreed that this had to be the most intense young love anybody’s ever seen. The stakes are higher between Clay and Sam because there’s an invisible expiration date on Clay’s life: the characters just don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring.” “Though the audience doesn’t know it right away—their love is so passionate, and so heart-breaking, because there’s a physical element to it which is a ticking clock.” “Clay is born into wealth, a multi-millionaire,” explains Harold. “Sam, on the other hand, comes from much smaller beginnings. Where Clay lives in a material world, Sam is somebody who exists on a much less materialistic plane. She’s a much more open person and I think he finds that attractive about her. When he’s with her, he’s in a little bubble, and they live in this little bubble together. And he sort of holds his breath until he has to go back.” Playing Sam is a refreshing change for Alba. “For whatever reason, I’ve only been hired to do big commercial movies,” she says after shooting the kiss with Christensen. “With movies, it often seems like the bigger the movie, the more people are in charge of what the story should be. The more money that’s put into the movie, the vaguer the characters can become. On AWAKE, it’s nice to be able to play a real character that has to make real choices, with motivations that are more complicated.”

Peter Noble • Tracy Gosling @ Peter Noble PR Consultancy Ltd.
Central Ignition
1 Mercers Mews
London N19 4PL
Tel: +44 (0) 207 272 7772
Fax: +44 (0) 207 272 2227
E-mail: peter@noblepr.co.uk | tracy@noblepr.co.uk

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