4 Star

New Life, Never Meant so Much.

Be prepared for a chilling tale of the future of the human race, as writer/director Alan Friel (Cake (Short), Snow (Short)) brings us his first feature film, and what a debut. He brings us the rugged coastline and seclusion of island life as the human race takes its last gasp of surviving. The perfect post-pandemic thriller.

The weather is bad, there are frantic footsteps, a heavily pregnant woman (Erin Kellyman, Solo: A Star Wars Story, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple) come to the edge of a cliff, she looks around frightened, then ultimately takes that final step into the rolling sea far below. Imagine the shock when she opens her eyes, and she is in a bed and a woman tells Anna (Erin Kellyman) the baby is fine, “you had a fall”.

The woman is Helen (Maxine Peake, I Swear, Funny Cow), and she has taken time away from her home where she lives with Peter (Corrado Invernizzi, Ford v Ferrari, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). They are helping Anna’s husband James (Ivanno Jeremiah, Humans (TV Series), Lockwood & Co. (TV Series)) look after her, as Helen has experience in childbirth.

The problem with Anna, apart from her head injury, is that she has no memories, so between the three of them they show her photo albums and home movies of them all enjoying island life.

It helps her when the Dr Henry (Peter McDonald, The Batman, The Damned United) comes to check on her and the baby, now that it’s two weeks to the birthdate.

Goats! Are there goats?

Can we go to the mainland? After the baby is born, maybe.

Things are uneasy, at all times as Anna can’t settle down, without her memories, and the seclusion and confinement of the cottage. While out walking to the beach she spots two people on a swan pedalo (possibly from Alton Towers UK), as Anna rushes to new human faces, Helen shouts an alarm and starts to wind up their air-raid siren.

Is this a safe island?

The truth has to come out now, the human race is on the verge of extinction as we know it, as a horrific pandemic has caused the human race to die off or become something else.

This revelation is a shock to Anna, and the safety of her unborn child, and when she sees the doctor and armed soldiers in a hazmat suits she panics and tries to get away, and what is revealed changes everything for Anna.

Woken is a cracking thriller story set in the near dystopian future.

So good you can feel the fear.

On digital 25 May from 101 Film