Ghost of Innocence

The Awakening (2011) is another ghost story, not very scary but exciting, with a twist that I am going to spoil.

It takes place in England after the Great War - so many had died that it is a country of ghosts. It starts with a seance, but Rebecca Hall soon reveals herself to be a debunker of spiritualists, and the seance to be a hoax. This is all neatly done, and it looks like Hall is going to be great fun, with a swashbuckling sense of drama and righteous hatred of frauds - yet a sensitivity that leaves her exhausted after each debunking. Now that this case is closed, she just wants to rest, but Dominic West (Punisher: War Zone's Jigsaw) has another mission for her. A boys' school out in the country is purportedly haunted, one boy has died mysteriously, and the rest of the boys are on edge. West applies a little psychological pressure, and she goes up against her will.

She is met by the housekeeper, Imelda Staunton (Delores Umbridge), who is a big fan of hers. The boys are scared, the teachers are rotters, and there's a menacing gamekeeper. She even senses the presence of a ghost.

The school is one of those stately English piles, very reminiscent of the house in The Innocents (but it isn't). There is even a lake, where a mysterious force tries to drown Hall. (I think I remember that scene from The Innocents.) I liked this atmosphere a lot. Now comes the Spoilers:

First of all, the school isn't haunted. A combination of pranks, bullying, and asthma killed the boy. So our heroine gets to debunk another mystery. The boys and teachers all go home for holidays, except for the housekeeper, Dominic West and a boy, Isaac Hempstead Wight, who has no family to go to (the War, I guess). They bond over Hall's childhood in Africa, but when she mentions him to West, he tells her that all the boys went home - he's a ghost.

Furthermore, Hall was not brought up in Africa - she was brought up in the very building that now houses this school! Staunton was her housekeeper when she was a child, when horrible things happened to her that scarred her for life. She has repressed the memory and didn't recognize the building at all. That's why Staunton wanted to bring her back - to bring peace to the ghosts in the house and to her ghosts.

There's one plot twist I usually hate - when a revelation takes everything you know and just tosses it away. When done well, it makes you re-evaluate what has come before, but even then it seems like a cheat. But when you go beyond unreliable narrator, and just say, we were lying, all that stuff doesn't matter, it's really this stuff, I tend to throw up my hands. For this, I wasn't thrilled, but kind of didn't mind - because I wasn't that invested in the plot.

In conclusion, not too scary, very atmospheric.