Plot

In early 1920s-era London, Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall), is a successful author who has built a career as a debunker of the paranormal. Soon after the death of her fiancé, she is approached by Robert Mallory (Dominic West) to look into the recent death of a student at the all-boys boarding school where he teaches. When students at the school report sightings of the young boy’s ghost, she decides to investigate. The mystery of the ghost at first appears to be just a schoolboy prank, but as Florence probes further, she starts to believe that her devotion to science can’t explain the phenomena she’s observing.

Iconic Scenes

• The opening scene, in which a family gathers to communicate with a son they’ve lost in the Great War. They have his photo, a lock of his hair, and the poor boy seems almost in the room until…
• Florence is preparing to leave the school as her initial investigation is winding down. Down by the lake, she drops her cigarette case, which belonged to her lover. As she reaches for it…
• The haunted dolls-house scene, perhaps the scariest/freakiest single moment in the whole movie.

Memorable Lines

Robert Mallory: [holding newspapers] What about these?
Florence Cathcart: Those are footprint catchers.
Robert Mallory: Ghosts have footprints?
Florence Cathcart: No. People pretending to be ghosts do.

****

Maud Hill: I never asked anything of the world, but it’s a perfect hell on earth to give a woman children to love and to rob her of them.

****

Robert Mallory: There have been other sightings. The boys believe…
Florence Cathcart: Boys believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I’m sure some of them even believe in God.

****

Florence Cathcart: Without Science, people don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.

****

Florence Cathcart: Not seeing them, it’s not the same as forgetting. Is it?

****

Thoughts from the HauntedHouses.com team

A haunted, post-WWI England is the setting for “The Awakening,” an admirably old-fashioned ghost story in the tradition of “The Others” and “The Orphanage.”

No-nonsense skeptic Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) has made a name for herself exposing the kind of bogus seances that were all the rage at the time, coinciding with the country’s appalling loss of life from war and influenza.

The self-possessed Hall is highly effective in her proto-feminist role, smoking and rolling her eyes as the fussy old men around her exclaim “An educated woman!” as if she were a scientific curiosity.

When schoolmaster Dominic West, from Rookwood — a countryside boarding school — asks her to help them investigate a strange death, she’s intent on showing that their alleged ghost — said to be a young boy with a deformed face — is nothing but a threadbare student prank.

First-time director Nick Murphy relies on classic genre tropes but uses them expertly, knowing that the true shivers come in the details: the flute-like sound of young boys’ singing voices echoing off the stone walls, the torn out eye of a teddy-bear, the tubercular coughing, and, most spookily, a dollhouse peopled with unnervingly active figurines.

There’s also a house matron who probably knows more than she’s saying. This time it’s Maud (Imelda Staunton), whose young charge, Tom (Isaac Hempstead-Wright, from “Game of Thrones”) is the forlorn boy who can’t go home for the holidays.

Written by Murphy with Stephen Volk, the film cultivates a growing sense of dread about the mysterious goings-on in the rambling old building drenched in the melancholy of the day: Florence harbors a sad secret involving a dead soldier, while West’s Robert Mallory is unable to forgive himself for being a survivor.

It’s only at the 11th hour that things come apart, but Hall keeps her cool. It’s refreshing to see a horror story heroine who doesn’t melt into hysteria in the third act — even if the final reveal is a terrible disappointment.

VISIT GREAT HAUNTED HOTELS