Does Dominic West have a secret thing for costume dramas? Hot on the heels of The Hour — in which he played a dapper, semi-sleazy fifties news anchor — he pops up in The Awakening, a supernatural thriller set in that fertile (for movies) era between World Wars I and II. Here, McNulty plays charming schoolmaster to Rebecca Hall’s severe writer-slash-ghost-hunter. West’s school is troubled by some unnatural beings, it seems, and the disbelieving Hall arrives to set everybody straight. (True period piece devotees will recognize the school as Pemberly, from the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.) Unfortunately for Hall, she violates two of the cardinal Rules for Surviving a Horror Movie: She sleeps with McNulty, and she utters the fate-tempting line, “You can’t hunt what doesn’t exist.” Oh ho, Rebecca Hall, just you wait. Events get creepier and occasionally blood-drenched from there, though it’s not ultimately clear whether we’re dealing with an actual ghost, a deranged kid, or the evil work of Imelda Staunton. But Vulture’s putting our money on the latter, because we know what happens when Staunton shows up at a boarding school. Look out, Dolores Umbridge is in the house.
