The Tribe Has Spoken

As we've long established, I'm an easy mark for a certain type of horror movie. Put keywords like "tropical island" or "tough chicks" or "Vinnie Jones" or "90 minutes on Neftlix Instant" in your description and you pretty much have an automatic review.

Quick Plot: Aforementioned tough chick Billie (Killer Mermaid's Natalie Burn) AWAKENs on a beautiful aforementioned tropical island being patrolled by Perfect Record Movie Enhancer* (and aforementioned) Vinnie Jones and his band of enforcers. Billie teams up with a ragtag assortment of strangers who like her, AWAKENed on this paradise with no idea how or why.

Leading the survivors is Robert Davi, creeping out the survivors is Edward Furlong, and gathering them all in secret is Jason (not Jeremy, as if that matters) London. 

Why go through the trouble of kidnapping random adults, dropping them on a small island surrounded by sharks and Vinnie Jones, and watching them from a mansion?  Well, get ready:

Remember that movie where Spartacus 1.0's wife was kidnapped and forced into a female fighting ring to determine if her baby would be adopted by a wealthy couple? Didn't that seem a little, you know, COMPLICATED? Well my dear friends, Awaken might just beat it. 

Why, you wonder, is J. London dropping hostages on an island, watching them through surveillance video, and occasionally sending a rather large team of mercenaries in to extract one? The answer is as simple as Turistas: organ theft!

To be clear, I am a huge supporter of organ donation to the point that I genuinely believe it should be illegal NOT to give your working parts to someone in need when you're done with them. But that has nothing to do with the issue in Awaken.

See, it's one thing to kidnap wandering strangers who won't be missed and harvest their parts. It's another to set up an elaborate tropical resort just so your victims are forced to take in the fresh air and eat island produce. If you're going to kidnap perfectly healthy people to save the life of Darryl Hannah's dying daughter, can't you just chain them up in a sun room and substitute coconuts for bread and water?

My point being, Awaken is pretty ridiculous movie. There are too many characters, too many mysteries, too many henchmen, (if such a thing exists) and way too little Vinnie Jones. Actual plot and sense aside, Awaken is also the kind of action/genre flick that emphasizes female strength, puts out some decent action scenes, and, well, is set on a really pretty locale. It's not a great film by anyone's definition of cinema, but it's entertaining and pretty to look at. These are not bad things.

High Points

With plenty of hand-to-hand combat, the action sequences are actually quite strong. It's genuinely enjoyable to watch Natalie Burn kick some ass

Low Points

It's just not exactly pleasing to watch anybody talk to each other in the awkward style of Awaken

Lessons Learned

Edward Furlong is really good at naked cuddling

Never have your bloodwork tested when south of Mexico

If you can't carry your own body weight, you can't do advanced technique

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, Awaken isn't exactly a "good" movie, but it's filmed on a beautiful tropical island, it stars (mostly) beautiful people, and it features a whole lot of decent fight scenes. If you're looking for something breezy to help you kill 90 minutes, you could certainly do infinitely worse. 

*Can we all agree that if there's one actor in this world who deserves better work, it's Vinnie Jones? The man is the cinematic equivalent of peanut butter. You can add him to ANYTHING and said thing will vastly improve by at least 33%. 

Free Healthcare At Its Not So Finest

In case you haven't noticed, it's October! That means this!

and stuff like this!

and some of these!

to go with these!

Also, horror movies! They're back! See for yourself:

Quick Plot: 1979 was six long years before the advent of DNA testing, something The Clinic tells us IMMEDIATELY so as to serve as a constant reminder of why the characters will later do some of the icky things they’ll later do. Got that?

Cut to the happy and exceedingly pretty lookalike couple Beth and Cameron, an engaged pair en route to visit Beth’s parents for Christmas. To do this, they have to drive straight across Australia and since this takes place 26 years before Wolf Creek, you can’t blame them for not knowing only very bad things happen to pretty people who dare drive through the outback.

After a Jeepers Creepers-y incident with an angry truck, the very pregnant Beth and Cameron stop for the night. Having trouble falling to sleep on Christmas Eve at a fleabag motel, Cameron takes a midnight stroll only to return to his room to…nothing.

The local yokel cops are no help, eventually arresting Cameron for getting too fired up about their lack of policing. As he struggles to find Beth, the action shifts to a large warehouse and factory farm facility where Beth wakes up in a tub of ice with a new belly scar in place of her baby.

Before long, she stumbles upon three other women who have recently been subject to unwanted C-sections. All are dressed in plain robes with Roman numeral name tags, and none have any idea how they came to end up in such a place. All they really know is that whoever took their babies also took the time to sew their wounds, although such a minor reprieve isn’t much consolation when a) your newborn is missing and b) there’s a fifth woman on the hunt for all of you.

Before I delve into spoiler territory—something I simply have to do to discuss some of the film’s strengths and weaknesses—let me say that first-time writer/director James Rabbitts is definitely one to watch…as a director.

The performances, design, and pacing of The Clinic is all top-notch. These factors go a long way in helping you forgot some of the positively misguided plotting of the script.

Spoilers will commence. Movie virgins can skip down to Rent/Bury/Buy for the big finish.

For the rest of you cinematic sluts, here goes:

In a twist that seems to call to mind Martyrs meets Battle Royale, we discover that the ladies are part of a twisted adoption agency that kidnaps highly successful pregnant women and pits them against each other in a battle to the death. Whoever survives gets the honor of having her baby adopted by a wealthy couple that then seals the deal by shooting the winning birth mother. 

Now just imagine what these parents will later do to get their kids into a good kindergarden!

As far as horror third act twists go, it’s not a terrible one. Just rather ridiculous, especially considering the ADDED twist that Beth (who was a last minute replacement in the wrong place at the wrong time) is actually a graduate of the infant program, thus explaining mysterious nightmares she’d had her whole life (because somehow, we retain everything that happened in our first week alive) and her surprising survival instincts.

I could STILL forgive The Clinic, logic be damned, if it didn’t make such a mess out of Cameron’s subplot. The late Andy Whitfield (he of Spartacus fame) is perfectly fine in the role, but Rabbitts never quite figures out how to make it work. His side story in trying to find Beth is so erratically timed, taking us away from the warehouse at key moments and ultimately frustrating our focus. I suppose the purpose is for Rabbitts to show just how far up the conspiracy (to, you know, steal rich and famous women’s babies) reaches. But it doesn’t go anywhere and when Cameron, I guess, dies in a car accident, I honestly didn’t even quite realize (or care) that his story was over.

More irksome to me was the glaring unanswered question: what about the five other newborns? One would assume all healthy infant children of well-educated or talented women would still fetch a fair price, but The Clinic never addresses that question. Worse, Beth makes a promise to one of the dying women that she will absolutely care for her baby, but during the final coda, we get nary a whisper of the fact that were other children. Sure, it’s a 90 minute movie and I can assume scenes were deleted for pacing issues, but FIVE ORPHANED NEWBORNS is a pretty sizable hole.

High Notes

As someone who can’t tell one baby from the next, I appreciate The Clinic’s assertion that all newborns pretty much look the same

Low Notes

I know life was different in the ‘70s and that Australia still entered the age of reason, but it’s sure hard to get behind a highly pregnant young woman driving cross country and not wearing her seatbelt

Lessons Learned

Cows make outstanding alarm systems

Australian men children sound an awful lot like your overconfident friend doing a lame impression of Christopher Walken

Just because you had an unwanted C-section 2 hours ago is no reason not to be able to climb fences, flee dingoes, or fight elite athletes in hand-to-hand combat

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Clinic is a frustrating film in terms of its storytelling, but as an independent horror movie coming from a first-time director, it’s not half bad. The actors all equip themselves admirably and the tension is raised with each scene. The film’s problems come from its scattered plotting, but for a 90 minute dark ride, it’s well worth a stream on Netflix. Just leave your brain at the hotel.