The Pandemic Paradox: When Horror Becomes a Tired Trope
There’s something eerily predictable about the post-apocalyptic genre these days. Personally, I think it’s become a crutch for filmmakers trying to tap into our collective anxiety. Take Woken, a film that, on paper, should have been a gripping exploration of isolation, memory, and survival. Instead, it feels like a missed opportunity—a beautifully shot but ultimately hollow entry into a genre that’s starting to feel like a broken record.
The Setup: A Pregnant Amnesiac in a Plague Zone
Erin Kellyman stars as Anna, a woman who wakes up pregnant, amnesiac, and stranded on an isolated island. What makes this particularly fascinating is the way the film tries to blur the lines between trust and paranoia. Anna’s neighbors, Helen (Maxine Peake) and James (Ivanno Jeremiah), seem friendly enough, but their smiles are just a little too wide, their explanations a little too rehearsed. It’s a classic setup for a psychological thriller, but Woken struggles to capitalize on its own potential.
From my perspective, the film’s biggest misstep is its pacing. The first half is a slow burn, focusing on Anna’s confusion and the eerie domesticity of her surroundings. But instead of building tension, it feels aimless. The dead butterflies, the lobster dinners—these details are meant to be symbolic, I suppose, but they come across as more pretentious than profound. What many people don’t realize is that symbolism needs substance to work, and Woken doesn’t deliver.
The Shift: From Social Realism to Sci-Fi
The second half of the film takes a hard left turn into sci-fi territory, complete with clandestine labs and hazmat-clad villains. One thing that immediately stands out is how jarring this shift feels. It’s as if the filmmakers couldn’t decide whether they wanted to make a character-driven drama or a high-concept thriller, so they settled for both. The result is a narrative that never quite gels, leaving the audience wondering what the point of it all was.
What this really suggests is that the post-apocalyptic genre is suffering from a lack of originality. After Children of Men and Never Let Me Go, the bar for dystopian storytelling is incredibly high. Woken tries to pay homage to these classics but ends up feeling derivative. The conspiracy Anna uncovers, her gun-toting escape—it’s all been done before, and with more finesse.
The Bigger Picture: Why We’re Obsessed with the End of the World
If you take a step back and think about it, our fascination with apocalypse narratives says a lot about our current moment. We’re living in an era of pandemics, climate crises, and political instability. Films like Woken are trying to tap into that anxiety, but they often fall short because they’re more interested in aesthetics than substance.
A detail that I find especially interesting is how Woken tries to use its setting—an isolated island—as a metaphor for both safety and entrapment. But the film never fully explores this idea. It’s as if the filmmakers were too busy trying to tick off genre tropes to bother with deeper themes. This raises a deeper question: Are we so numb to the idea of the end of the world that we’ve stopped caring about the stories that try to explore it?
Final Thoughts: A Missed Opportunity
In my opinion, Woken is a film that had all the right ingredients but failed to mix them into something meaningful. Kellyman and Peake deliver strong performances, and the cinematography is undeniably beautiful. But none of that can save a script that feels uninspired and a narrative that lacks focus.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that the film touches on so many interesting ideas—memory, trust, survival—but never bothers to develop them. It’s like a half-finished painting, all potential and no payoff. If Woken is trying to say something about the human condition in the face of catastrophe, it’s lost in a sea of clichés and borrowed ideas.
Personally, I think the post-apocalyptic genre needs a reset. We’ve seen enough amnesiac survivors, enough plague zones, enough faceless villains in hazmat suits. What we need are stories that challenge us, that force us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our world. Woken had the chance to be one of those stories, but it settled for being just another entry in an increasingly tired trope.
