Are You Awake?
2023 · 12m · USA
Directed by Gabriel Caste
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
A detached woman who earns a living as a door-to-door wake-up caller encounters a client who refuses to leave his bed, paralyzed by terrible nightmares. What begins as a routine house call becomes an intimate, unsettling meditation on grief, mental health, and human connection.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Door-to-door wake-up-caller as job is the rare festival premise that actually deserves the word 'premise.' Sci-fi/depression conflation could go inert, but I want to see what they do with it.
A door-to-door wake-up caller encountering a man who refuses to leave bed is a poetic conceit Charlie Kaufman would recognize — Caste is staking out interior-grief territory. Genre-blur is the gamble, and I suspect the execution is more atmospheric than the comparisons promise.
A door-to-door wake-up caller is a genuinely novel job-premise for a depression movie, and the writer-director-editor-co-star credit stack means it's a real authored object. FilmQuest cinematography and editing nominations point to actual craft underneath the concept.
Reviews
Masterfully turns the theme of loss into a thought-provoking psychological thriller.
A fascinating film that takes a page out of the likes of Get Out and Us, playing as both a psychological drama and a mystery thriller, and it is also surprisingly creepy.
Festivals
- Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2023