When the night comes, a young woman taking care of two children in a big house will have to cope with a strange presence.
Bhargav Saikia’s ‘Awakenings’ has the rare ability to make you shiver with fright in just around 13 minutes. If it sounds like a race to deliver the chills, believe it, it’s not! The young director does his job with extreme patience and it is obvious he has the power to remain loyal to his original cinematographic vision – that vision that one has before even starting to film.
‘Awakenings’, though, stands out not (only) through its ‘frightening’ appearance but first of all through its refined, sophisticated ‘design’ of horror. The horror in Bhargav Saikia’s film is not due to just some frightening beings – usually made up specifically for this kind of a story – but to some mystical connection between them, the history of the house and the characters’ background.
Everything in ‘Awakenings’ leaves the impression it is connected to a deeper sense of the reality which makes it feel occult. The elevated music and the neat accurate cinematography engineer an authentic mood, while characters playing well the humane simplicity make a great contrast with the ‘unusual’, helping enhancing the feelings of terror when the ‘awakenings’ take place.
Bhargav Saikia’s film, through its refined inclination towards the occult side of reality, surely makes a discordant note among short films of the same genre. ‘Awakenings’ manages to be a well-bred, entertaining and not least a scary view.
TMFF RATING:
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