The Awakening poster

The Awakening (2011)

Film · 1h 47m · Rated R

Horror, Mystery, Thriller

A skeptical ghost hunter confronts chilling apparitions and a melancholy past at an isolated boys' school.

Suspenseful. A late-night trip at a measured pace. Emotionally it is heavy.

Streaming on Prime Video, Kanopy (free) and Tubi (free).

The Awakening parents guide

It stays inside its R, with real scares and several jump scares.

Scare
Properly scary
Frightening, not just tense.
Jump scares
Several
More than a couple of sudden jolts.
Gore
Light gore
Some blood or injury, briefly.
Violence
Some violence
Some fighting or peril.
Sex and nudity
Mild
Mild means innuendo, or sex implied off screen, with no nudity.
Language
Mild
Mild words like damn, hell or crap.

How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.

Three questions

Is The Awakening scary?
Yes, properly. The Awakening is the real thing without being an endurance test.
How gory is The Awakening?
Light gore and some violence.
What is The Awakening rated, and is it OK for kids?
Rated R, and it earns it: real scares and several jump scares. Not one for kids.

What is The Awakening about?

In post–War England, a writer and sometime-ghost hunter investigates a reported haunting at a boys boarding school.

Does it have a happy ending? (spoiler-safe)

There is a twist, and that is all we are saying.

Cast and crew

Directed byNick Murphy
StarringRebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Lucy Cohu, Cal MacAninch

More like The Awakening

The Awakening is on our Ghosts and hauntings, Horror on Prime Video, Mystery on Prime Video, Horror on Tubi and Mystery on Tubi lists.

More like this feeling

Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.

Lists with the same feel: Melancholy; and Scary, not gory.

Five more like The Awakening

Say the mood. Five picks with where they stream, right here.

Uses the TMDB API; not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Intensity, content, tone and pace tags are CouchRot's own.