‘Awareness’ (2023) Prime Video Movie Review - A Terrible Sci-Fi/Thriller

The world of Daniel Benmayor's Awareness consists of perceivers who have the ability to create visual illusions. They can make you see hailstorms or a person, even if these particular things do not actually exist around you. These special individuals have formed an organization, and it's called... Awareness. They are the bad guys, and some people from another organization capture Ian (Carlos Scholz) and warn him to stay away from the perceivers as they would want him to join them. You see, Ian, too, can do mind tricks, and during the opening scenes, we watch him and his father, Vicente (Pedro Alonso), fool a shopkeeper so that they can steal alcohol. Ian wants to do something big (rob a bank), but his dad rejects the idea because that would draw unnecessary attention towards them and could lead to Ian getting examined like a rat in some lab.

Does all this appear intriguing to you? I sure didn't enjoy writing even a single word, and I yawned a lot while watching Benmayor's sci-fi/thriller. The movie is called Awareness, and the only thing it makes you aware of is the fact that it's terrible. This soulless exercise in driving the audience toward the edge of insanity is so illogical that I threw my hands up and succumbed to its vacuous vision. Eventually, everything became incomprehensible, and I gave up attempting to uncover any underlying significance. I also don't know the names of many of the characters. The movie doesn't give you any reason to be invested. A part of me thinks it was made as an experiment to see how much nonsense we can digest before throwing up.

Is Awareness conversant with the fact that it's horrible? Apparently, no one cares about what's going on here. We are initially told who's the bad guy and who's not.  As the movie unfolds, the villain turns into a hero, and vice versa. This pattern repeats itself multiple times as the story progresses. For the sake of appearing perspicacious or whatever, I want to point out that perhaps this shift in behavior has something to do with the film's concept about illusion (don't trust what's in front of your vision), but the text itself is so crummy that such interpretations automatically sound laughable.

The frames are aesthetically unpleasing and have the potential to cause discomfort to your eyes. There is no hint of ingenuity or imagination. The two incidents that stand out here appear weird or seem to have occurred by chance. Ian peeps into the bathroom when Ester (María Pedraza) takes a shower and then quickly closes the door and the curtains. I know what you are thinking, but the director doesn't go there. The moment serves as an example of unintentional humor. In the climax, numerous individuals at a "party" lay down on the floor, and half of them roll to one side while the other half roll to the other side. Although this appears to be the pinnacle of creativity in the film, it is diminished by the simple realization that the villain could have easily employed a more efficient strategy by directing everyone to attack Ian simultaneously.

In a movie this atrocious, it feels weird to see an incredible visual involving water being given to a perceiver by attaching the glass to a weapon. Also, in a movie like this, you can't help but scream at the hero when he refuses to listen to a man. The guy just wants to talk, Ian! Hear what he has to say and move the plot forward! Because that's precisely what the characters do here. They simply push the story to its destination. It's futile to talk about the final twists as they only raise more questions that I don't think the movie would ever answer (I am not holding my breath), and it further throws everything into the realm of ridiculousness. But there is one awesome thing in Awareness, and that's Pedraza. Observe how effortlessly her body moves when she hits the attackers. She makes the violence sing through her movements and should be given more opportunities to do action.

Final Score- [2.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times