The acting is fine and the imagery brooding, but this tepid sci-fi – all creepy neighbours, hazmat squads and crustacean-faced infected – is in thrall to better filmsTo 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Bone Temple, Erin Kellyman makes another plague outing in this good-looking but ineffective post-apocalyptic thriller (originally made in 2023).Kellyman’s bewildered survivor Anna, waking up in a shabby cottage on an isolated island, doesn’t even know she’s in the midst of a pandemic at first.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. Continue reading...

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/18/woken-review-shonky-post-apocalyptic-horror-sends-an-amnesiac-into-the-plague-zone