Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Phil Hoad

Woken review – shonky post-apocalyptic horror sends an amnesiac into the plague zone

A pair of people infected with an apocalyptic plague stand by a swan-shaped pedalo.
Safety first … Woken. Photograph: Everett/Shutterstock

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, getting caught in one pandemic may be regarded as misfortune; getting caught in two looks like your agent may be keen on riding the post-Covid zeitgeist. After her turn as part of Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal’s posse in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Erin Kellyman makes another plague outing in this good-looking but ineffective post-apocalyptic thriller (originally made in 2023).

Kellyman’s bewildered survivor Anna, waking up in a shabby cottage on an isolated island, doesn’t even know she’s in the midst of a pandemic at first. Amnesiac and heavily pregnant, she has to trust grinning neighbour Helen (Maxine Peake) when she says Anna has had a bad fall and that James (Ivanno Jeremiah) – also prone to smiling a bit too much – is her husband. It’s only when a swan-shaped pedalo boat deposits a pair of crustacean-faced, infected castaways, and her seemingly lovely friends shoot and burn them, that she begins to realise this is no island paradise.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.