Nick Murphy makes his feature film directorial debut with The Awakening--a supernatural period thriller that seemed like a pretty solid piece of ghost cinema until it sadly veered towards common territory towards the end.

The story is set during WWI and follows a female ghost-debunker who travels from one place to the other proving false supernatural claims. Her recent gig takes her to a faraway prestigious boy's school that the staff says has been haunted for years by the eerie spirit of a deceased young boy. The skeptic that she is, she goes in thinking it'll be another easy job, but soon realizes that there may be more to these stories and sightings than she thought.

This is more of a ghostly drama than anything, as it's a very slow-building supernatural tale that's kind of in the vein of older pics that relied more on character development, storytelling and atmosphere than anything. Some may be turned off by this, but I found it refreshing compared to most of the shit that comes out of the supernatural sub-genre now, specifically with all these unimaginative found footage efforts.