Netflix & Spill: Awake
awake? more like i'm asleep
My problematic favorite is Gina Rodriguez. This is something you have to know about me. Her energy, although chaotic and scary, completely mesmerizes me. I might like her more than Kanye West, my other problematic fav. We know her from her heebie-jeebies video, my favorite tweet of all time, and her general anti-blackness. Before all of that became public she was Jane the Virgin. And before Jane the Virgin ripped my heart out of my chest, stomped on it, put it in a blender, and then tried to give it back to me convincing me my heart was still in perfectly working condition I was a real big fan. It’s hard to shake my secret-like of her, also she’s like a really good actress? Idk fight me. After her vid saying the N word she turned off comments on Instagram and went pretty offline. Fortunately for us she came back to promote Awake (comments still off though).
I’ve been cursed ever since referring to Dog Gone Trouble as the “worst of the bunch” because I can confirm that the Netflix Drops ™ are becoming unwatchable. Awake takes the crown. It’s hard to even begin to describe because it makes so little sense.
SOMETHING happens and suddenly no one in the world can sleep anymore. All power and electricity goes off- cars don’t even work anymore. Approximately 10-12 hours after this black out thing happens Gina Rodriguez’s character goes into work assuming she still needs to. Someone comes running in announcing they have a “Hub” they are building where the one woman who can sleep will be tested. Yes that’s right the entire world is unable to sleep confirmed in 10-12 hours. We seemed to have skipped the first hour of the film. Somehow we already know:
1. Only one woman can sleep
2. Sleep deprivation is elevated so instead of a week or so because everyone cracks we only have 72 hours until the world ends
How do we know this? It simply does not matter. We find out Gina’s daughter can also sleep but this is supposed to be a secret. Gina refuses to bring her family to The Hub because she is a veteran and knows the horrible experiments they run on people at Hubs! A fun treat in this film was that the newcomer in an earlier Netflix & Spill movie Stowaway, Shamier Anderson played the same role! He comes out of nowhere. He is not to be trusted. Or he might be the only one to trust. He is given no backstory and he is thrown in mid movie. Shamier please please branch out! What a weird person to be type cast as.
Because their sleep deprivation is sped up everyone makes really chaotic decisions and is slowing losing grips with reality. Lots of unnecessary murder and shooting. Naked people in the streets. Prisoners on the loose. All of this makes for a humorous shoot out when they make it to The Hub (of course they decide to go) it becomes way too dramatic.
Like my letterboxd review said, it's actually incredible how quickly this movie will put you to sleep. If if they let Gina Rodriguez cry (what she does best) the movie could have been watchable. But they never even let her flex those tear ducts. A sob scene should be in her contract! EVERY. TIME.
Next week we watch Fatherhood.