Dead Awake | |
---|---|
Directed by | Marc S. Grenier |
Written by | Terry Abrahamson |
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | David Franco |
Edited by | Yvann Thibaudeau |
Music by | E.P. Bergen |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by |
|
Release date |
|
Running time | 98 minutes [1] [2] |
Countries | Canada, U.S. |
Language | English |
Budget | C$4.2 million |
Dead Awake (also released as Dead of the Night) [1] is a 2001 Canadian-American dark comedy thriller film made for television, directed by co-producer Marc S. Grenier and starring Stephen Baldwin, Macha Grenon and Michael Ironside.
Marketing executive Desmond Caine (Stephen Baldwin) is stricken with a bizarre form of insomnia, spending his nights walking the city's dangerous streets at night. Caine ends up at a local deli where he encounters some unusual characters: a nice, if bit lost, young woman (Macha Grenon) and a slightly deranged man who looks homeless (Michael Ironside), and an anti-social policeman.
During one of his half-hallucinogenic journeys, Caine witnesses a brutal murder. He finds the victim's watch and goes to the police. Returning to the scene, there is no sign of the crime.
Stranger still, Caine's girlfriend (Maxim Roy) is completely unaware that he gets up at night and wanders the city, while his personal assistant (Janet Kidder) seems to know all about his exploits. The police discover that the murdered man was connected to Caine's girlfriend; no longer only a witness, he is now the prime suspect...
In July 2000, Dead Awake was described[ by whom? ] as "a thriller with a dark twist of comedy". [3]
Locomotion Films, part of the Montreal Exponent Group, comprising commercial houses La Fabrique d'Images and S.W.A.T Films, and post and digital effects house Buzz Image Group, was officially launched in 1999 with a view to develop English and French-track feature films, television series, and dramatic shorts. Director and co-producer Marc S. Grenier said he and his colleagues were ready "to do something entirely serious", moving into fiction after working many years in commercials (Grenier directed the 1999 Cinequest Films entry Cause of Death, and the 1998 Motion International television movie Fatal Affair). [3] Dead Awake was made for television, [4] and was Locomotion's second feature production for the year 2000 with a budget of $4.2 million. [3] [4]
The screenplay was written by Chicago-based Terry Abrahamson. [3] Two working titles for the film were Wild Awake and Dead of Night. [1]
Principal photography took place over twenty days in Montreal, June 9 to July 6, 2000, under the working title Dead of Night. [3] [4] Grenier said that cinematographer David Franco used a lot of interesting wide angle shots, giving the film "an unusual and edgy look." [3] Grenier elaborated: "The whole movie is like a maze. You know there's an exit but it seems unreachable and everything just keeps getting weirder and weirder."
Dead Awake was first broadcast on November 6, 2001. [5]
With a generic title and low-level American star, this could easily be dismissed as another bland straight-to-video thriller... it's a surprisingly eccentric, comic thriller, that plays around with chronology and expectations. A little confusing at times, as it rushes through some explanations, but definitely worth a look. Lots of quirky characters and decent performances -- particularly Grenon and Ironside (both in slightly smaller parts than their billing would suggest) who give delightfully atypical performances as inhabitants of an all-night diner the hero frequents. That's Conrad Pla as the transvestite hooker.
The Great Canadian Movie Database [6]
In July 2000, it was announced that Dead Awake would be distributed by Lions Gate Films in Canada, by Millennium Pictures in the United States and by Martien Holding internationally. [3]
Dead Awake was released on VHS (Millennium) and DVD (First Look Home Entertainment) in 2002. [7] [8]
The film is currently available on Amazon Prime. [9]
The author of Critic Online calls Dead Awake one of the better Canadian thrillers of the early 2000s because of its interesting characters, and one of Stephen Baldwin's best films, because "it incorporates his morose acting style into the script." [10] The Great Canadian Movie Guide assigns the film 3 stars, praising the unconventional performances and imaginative story. [6] Johnny Betts was "surprised" to find that Dead Awake "is actually a decent little movie" with "a plot and doesn't rely on women taking off their clothes every two minutes (a staple in most straight-to-video movies)." Betts also praised the "mix of plot twists, dark humor, and weirdness." [11]
Sir Michael Caine is an English retired actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over a career spanning eight decades and is considered a British film icon. He has received numerous awards including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. As of 2017, the films in which Caine has appeared have grossed over $7.8 billion worldwide. Caine is one of only five male actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in five different decades. In 2000, he received a BAFTA Fellowship and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Manoj Nelliyattu "M. Night" Shyamalan is an Indian American film director, producer and screenwriter. His films often employ supernatural plots and twist endings. The cumulative gross of his films exceeds $3.3 billion globally.
Stephen Andrew Baldwin is an American actor, producer, director and activist. He has appeared in the films Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Posse (1993), 8 Seconds (1994), Threesome (1994), The Usual Suspects (1995), Bio-Dome (1996) and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000). Baldwin also starred in the television series The Young Riders (1989–1992) and as himself in the reality shows Celebrity Big Brother 7, which he placed 9th, in the United Kingdom and Celebrity Apprentice. In 2004, he directed Livin' It, a Christian-themed skateboarding DVD. He is the youngest of the four Baldwin brothers.
William Joseph Baldwin is an American actor. A member of the Baldwin family, he is the second-youngest Baldwin of the four Baldwin brothers. He has starred in the films Flatliners (1990), Backdraft (1991), Sliver (1993), Virus (1999), The Squid and the Whale (2005), Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he portrayed himself, and the Netflix show Northern Rescue (2019). Baldwin is married to singer Chynna Phillips.
Frederick Reginald "Michael" Ironside is a Canadian actor and filmmaker. He is known for playing villains and antiheroes, but has also portrayed sympathetic characters.
Denis Villeneuve is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a four-time recipient of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction, winning for Maelström in 2001, Polytechnique in 2009, Incendies in 2010 and Enemy in 2013. The first three of these films also won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, while the latter was awarded the prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
Gil Bellows is a Canadian actor, screenwriter, and director. He is best known for the roles of Tommy Williams in the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption, Billy Thomas in the Fox television series Ally McBeal (1997–2002), and CIA agent Matt Callan in the CBS television series The Agency (2001–2003). In 2016–2017, he was a regular cast member in the USA Network series Eyewitness.
Molly Parker is a Canadian actress, writer, and director. She garnered critical attention for her portrayal of a necrophiliac medical student in the controversial drama Kissed (1996). She subsequently starred in the television thriller Intensity (1997) before landing her first major American film role in the drama Waking the Dead (2000). She gained further notice for her role as a Las Vegas escort in the drama The Center of the World (2001), for which she was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead.
Adrian Sean Grenier is an American actor, producer, director and musician. He is best known for his portrayal of Vincent Chase in the television series Entourage (2004–2011). He has appeared in films such as Drive Me Crazy (1999), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Trash Fire (2016) and Marauders (2016). In 2021, he acted in the Netflix series Clickbait.
Todd Strasser is an American writer of more than 140 young-adult and middle grade novels and many short stories and works of non-fiction, some written under the pen names Morton Rhue and T.S. Rue.
Sarah Lynn Gadon is a Canadian actress. She began her acting career guest-starring in a number of television series, such as Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1999), Mutant X (2002), and Dark Oracle (2004). She also worked as a voice actress on various television productions. Gadon gained recognition for her roles in David Cronenberg's films A Dangerous Method (2011), Cosmopolis (2012), and Maps to the Stars (2014). She also starred in Denis Villeneuve's thriller Enemy (2013), the period drama Belle (2013), and the action horror film Dracula Untold (2014).
Frightmare is a 1983 American supernatural slasher film written and directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane. It stars Ferdy Mayne, Luca Bercovici, Jennifer Starrett, Nita Talbot and Barbara Pilavin, along with Jeffrey Combs in his horror film acting debut. The film's plot follows a group of drama students who decide to kidnap the corpse of a recently deceased horror movie star. By disrupting his tomb, they unwittingly release an ancient black magic that begins consuming them one by one.
Shimon Dotan is an Israeli film director, screenwriter, and producer.
Macha Grenon is a Canadian film and television actress.
Family Pack is a 2000 drama film, directed by Chris Vander Stappen.
The Sleep Room is a 1998 Canadian television movie about experiments on Canadian mental patients that were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by Donald Ewen Cameron and funded by the CIA's MKUltra program. It originally aired as a miniseries and is based on the book In The Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada by Anne Collins.
Forget and Forgive is a 2014 Canadian suspense-thriller television film directed by Tristan Dubois and starring Elisabeth Röhm as a policewoman who, after a brutal interrogation, is left for dead, but survives with no memory of her life or her family. The film features an original score by James Gelfand and Louise Tremblay.
The Ideal Man is a Canadian romantic comedy film, directed by George Mihalka and released in 1996. The film stars Marie-Lise Pilote as Lucie, a successful magazine editor who feels her biological clock ticking as she has reached the age of 35 without becoming a mother, and sets out on a quest to meet as many men as possible over the next three months in the hopes of finally finding the ideal man to father a child.
Postmodern horror is a horror film related to the art and philosophy of postmodernism. Examples of this type of film includes George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's legendary slasher film Halloween.