BBC Films Backs Period Supernatural Thriller

Starring Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton, The Awakening is set in a haunted boarding school in the 1920s

BBC Films, StudioCanal Features and Scottish Screen are joining forces for The Awakening, a supernatural thriller set in a boarding school in 1921. Set to be the first feature film by TV director Nick (Occupation) Murphy, it’s co-written by Murphy and Stephen Volk, writer creator of the Lesley Sharp-starring ITV series Afterlife, and the legendary mockumentary Ghostwatch.

It will star Rebecca (Dorian Gray) Hall as a skeptical woman who travels to a countryside boarding school to investigate rumours of an apparent haunting. Just when she thinks she has debunked the ghost theory, she has a chilling spectral encounter which defies all her rational beliefs. Dominic (The Wire) West and Imelda (Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix) Staunton also star. Filming begins in June.

Let’s hope the plot’s more original than the title. There are about 30 other “The Awakening”s listed on IMDB (there was even a period thriller called The Awakening in 1980, starring Charlton Heston, and an 1984 episode of Doctor Who called that as well).