Awake not Woke!

Horrible acting. Basically one of the those generic 90's dollar bin DVD's. Everything about this in amateur filmmaking. This guy is in his 70's and a war vet. The hilarious war scene that looks like it was filmed in someone's backyard looks like it's supposed to be Vietnam but he would of been in in his late 50's to early 60's given this is in 1988. This even has the obviously bad inside the moving car green screen. I suppose it's possible this was done on purpose but somehow I doubt it. This guy might be the worst special forces marksman in history. In the first firefight he has several chances to engage his pursues with them advancing in a bottleneck for a clear line of fire but instead falls back and allows them to enter a wide open area with plenty of cover before exposing his position. Lang gives a decent performance but it's a bit unbelievable this 74 year old would be able pull off some of the stunts and fights he's supposed to be doing here. I didn't see anything woke but unfortunately just not a good movie.

So this was one of the top horror movies of 2025? The acting was pretty good and the fx looked good. The story isn't really that original but it's not terrible, what we get of a story anyway. Nothing is ever explained in the end, there's is no reason for anything give. This has some of the most bottom of barrel lazy bad writing I have seen in a while. Basically what you have is 17 kids all from the same class run away at 2:17 on the same night. The movie takes place over a week 30 days after the disappearance from multiple different people's perspectives that all merge together in the end. The very first one is Justine and I knew the movie was in trouble already. Why open your movie with the most irritating, annoying character that I hated right away. I started noticing writing issues pretty much from the start. It's a little thing but characters kept saying the kids all walked off into the night, yet multiple ring cameras show them bolting out the front doors and running away at full speed. This brings up another issue, everyone has cameras now, there would be a ton of footage of these kids running down streets and through front yards all the way to the destination. Not here magically not one camera seems to exist other than the couple of plot device required ones. It's only been 30 days yet theirs no police, no search parties, no FBI anywhere. Something like this would be national news. This town would be crawling with media not to mention all the nosy bloggers and internet types, yet here nothing, not a single one. Actually the entire movie feels very low budget, the whole town is oddly empty. Every scene is devoid of any life other than the character on screen, no background characters, no cars just completely empty backgrounds. This is also horror in the loosest sense of the word, there's a few jump scares and creepy moments mixed with maybe a handful of disturbingly bloody violent scenes but it's very few. Most of the runtime is slow moving drama to get all the characters to the end sequence. This brings me to the finale, what a letdown after all that. The final 20 or so minutes turns into a lough out loud comical sequence. I was literally laughing at how bad the ending was. For woke, as others have said there is the gay mixed race couple. It's maybe 2 scenes of them walking around together and that's it. It's never brought up or made into an issue but it's there. There is also way to much DEI overrepresentation for what's supposed to be small town PA. I would not recommend this at all. Some spoilers follow that give more examples of how horrible the writing is...... While I don't believe their was any actual family relationship how Gladys was able to persuade, find or cloud the minds of the family is never explains or really makes any sense. She's introducing herself as the Aunt and sister of the mom to everyone including investigators, who by the way have no problem with catatonic parents sitting like zombies while the aunt just takes over the household. Nobody questions how this mid 70's woman could possibly be the sister of the 32 year old mom. An officer and squad car disappear for several days with his car sitting outside the house and the station doesn't notice? The neighbors don't notice the car for days outside the house? The parents just vanish of the face of the earth for over a month and nobody notices? No friends or work notices them missing? Neighbors don't notice they just vanish and some strange woman is now living there? A screaming man is dragged out of a car across the front lawn and into a house and no neighbors hear or see anything? Even worse, screaming, smashing around fighting and several gunshots and not one neighbor right next door hears anything. Even the child narrator at the beginning, who we never actually see anywhere in the movie and appears to completely random states the kids 'walked off into the night never to be seen again' is in the end just a blatant cheap lie by the director.

No woke. Not a bad watch. It's just not my thing.

Impossible situations. Mechanical booby traps that have been dormant for centuries, but are perfectly operational, corny jokes, and ridiculous fight scenes. If you like that kind of thing, this movie's for you. It's sort of a dark, slapstick movie with a big budget.

Surprisingly accurate for a voluntarily modern vision.

This is not a serious movie; and yet, it gets so many details right, or closer to right than most movies this century. The armour, weaponry, costumes are (most of them) pretty much coherent with 14th century Europe. Not historically perfect, some details modernised, but nothing is jarringly bad. The movie does bend the timeline a little, but the pervasive Chaucer in-jokes make up for it. By modern vision, I do in no way the fabled "modern audience"; I mean translating (some) events or costumes into modern culture. The movie opens with the peasantry singing Queen's We Will Rock You at a tournament. Though obviously anachronistic, it does, to my mind, convey the overall feeling. Tournaments, jousting in particular, was a cross between pro wrestling and drag racing at the time. Big show. So yeah, Queen. Love the bloke turning donuts with his horse. The cast is brilliant, to the last. Bettany is simply fantastic as an over-the-top Chaucer. Ledger was on his way to greatness. Tudy is Tudyk. Addy is at his best. Sewell is perpetually under-rated. As for political agenda, I find none. Yeah, female blacksmith. It did happen. Widow to a tradesman (as in this movie), cause one has to eat, or tradesman with no son, cause trade is precious. In both cases, they would help enough to pick up some skills. Armourer, though, might be pushing it; there are (rare) historical examples, but the actress just looks on the smallish side. Ah well, it fits with the rest. All in all, a surprisingly good and endearing movie.