Mark Raso Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn director Mark Raso’s occasionally engaging but mostly frustrating sci-fi thriller, an unexplained event causes a massive electromagnetic pulse that fries most electronics and leaves nearly all of humanity incapable of sleep. From the mysterious incident onward, the characters slowly slide toward insanity as fatigue takes its toll, although it’s not clear how everyone on earth immediately recognizes (or believes) that the resulting restlessness is permanent.

Days before a Targaryen civil war erupts between Rhaenyra and Alicent on the Season 1 finale of HBO’s House of the Dragon, you’ll find series creator George R.R. Martin staying mum on fire-breathing animals and talking up his latest rotoscope animated short, Night of the Cooters, in his Santa Fe, NM stomping ground.

Given the success of movies like “A Quiet Place” (and “A Quiet Place Part II”) and “Bird Box,” there’s undeniably a big market for movies that play with an audience’s daily reliance on senses or shared experiences. Netflix’s new film “Awake” seems to have been created from the simple idea that since everyone needs to sleep to live, it would be scary to not be able to.