THE AWAKENING

1921, England. Investigative journalist Florence Cathcart specializes in exposing paranormal hoaxes and, due to her expertise, is contacted by the headmaster of Rookford College, where students are terrified by the presence of a ghost. Florence immediately goes to the mansion hidden in the woods and begins setting up her equipment. By the first night, she manages to figure out who is hiding behind the mask of the supposed ghost, but of course, the matter is not as simple as it seems to resolve. Thanks to modern Spanish cinema, the gothic ghost story has made a comeback in recent years. From the beautiful «The Others» by Amenabar to the equally suggestive «The Devil's Backbone» by del Toro and «The Orphanage» by Bayona, through «Fragile» by Balaguerò and the less captivating «Saint Ange» by Laugier, we have seen enough films of the same genre. Now comes the British «1921 – The Rookford Mystery», which inevitably appears a bit of a mashup of everything that has come out in recent years, paying the price of being the latest arrival. The gloomy and lugubrious atmospheres of Rookford School are magnificently lit by the crepuscular photography of Eduard Grau («Buried») and indeed, the element that is most memorable about this film is precisely the beautiful atmosphere that television director Nick Murphy («Roma»; «Primeval») manages to create using all the tropes that the genre requires. «The Rookford Mystery» plays a lot with the location and the shadows, leaving very marginal the opportunities for scares that are instead an essential element for most of the similar films mentioned above. Murphy seems almost uninterested in the purely horror component that is nevertheless predominant, focusing partly on melodrama and partly on the post-war aftermath with which the country is forced to deal. If the more purely melodramatic component that predominates in the long finale feels like an already seen and predictable annoyance, it is the immersion in the post-war atmosphere that proves to be the film's most interesting point. «1921 – The Rookford Mystery» takes place in England in the year that heads the Italian title, in full reconstructive phase following the horrors of the Great War. The country is in mourning and weeps for its fallen, unleashing in people an intense need for «ghosts». It is precisely on this (super)natural need that the essence of the film and the most original and interesting aspect are based. «The Rookford Mystery» opens with a seance that we soon discover to be a scam, a widespread and profitable practice precisely at a time when people were seeking contact with those who had recently left them, in war. From here, the basis of this mutual need between the living and the dead is immediately established, then deepened in the figure of the headmaster of Rookford (Dominic West), a war veteran continuously surrounded by the ghosts of his fallen comrades, and in the figure of the skeptical protagonist, also deprived of the love of her man who died at the front. No less, the entire final climax is immersed in this demonstration of mutual need, taken to the extreme consequences, with a Rebecca Hall/Florence Cathcart progressively disabused of her skepticism and accompanied to the «awakening» of her conscience (not coincidentally, the original title of the film is «The Awakening», the awakening, indeed). Florence's character is interesting, even though the screenplay by Nick Murphy and Stephen Volk («Gothic», «L'albero del male») gives her a very basic and similar character development to that of many other films. Florence is introduced as a sort of Dylan Dog with the skepticism of the Mike Enslin from King's «1408»: first engaged in exposing a fake medium and then reached at her home by a client who wants to hire her for a case of haunting. The way Florence acts coy in front of the request of the headmaster of Rookford makes her appear like a Dylan Dog in a skirt, then of course her skepticism is put to the test until a complete conversion in the face of the evidence of the facts. Florence's character development is therefore predictable, even if functional, but it only represents an alarm bell for a sense of déjà-vu and predictability that unfortunately accompanies the entire film. The biggest flaw of «The Rookford Mystery» is precisely its appearance of being too assimilable to the masses, it lacks a distinguishing mark that can set it apart and make it memorable for the viewer the day after watching. Unfortunately, the opposite happens and despite the beautiful atmosphere, some interesting insights (the ghosts of war) and a brilliant Rebecca Hall («The Town»; «Dorian Gray») in the lead role, the film is easily forgotten. The relaxed pace and lack of moments of real tension do not help, which affects the viewer's attention. In these terms, «The Rookford Mystery» works better in the first part, where the only two moments of suspense (the one with the dollhouse also quite successful) are found, then the film slows down and becomes a bit boring, up to an unconvincing ending. «1921 – The Rookford Mystery» is certainly watchable and will not fail to be appreciated by fans of gothic ghost stories, but the lack of originality, the absence of scares, and the slowness that borders on boredom make it forgettable and uninvolving. Add half a pumpkin to the final rating. Trivia. «1921 – The Rookford Mystery» was born from the idea of bringing to the cinema a famous BBC television program, «Ghostwatch», broadcast by the English network in the early 1990s and then suspended because it was considered too scary for TV.