Wake Up (2010)

Just perfect...

Did you people see the same film I saw?

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Spirituality isn't a topic for debate using facts or statistics. It's based on a key factor that cannot be proved: faith. The very definition of the word faith when used in spirituality means to have trust and belief in something you cannot prove. For me, either you have it or you don't. When you have it, there is nothing anyone can say or do to dissuade you from your beliefs and many who do not have it spend a lot of time trying to make those with faith feel stupid or uninformed.Jonas Elrod moves me in this film because of his honest and brave approach of placing his fears in the open and rolling up his sleeves and getting to the bottom of what is happening to him in his new existence. It's an candid journey over three years following a man desperately trying to figure out why he can all of the sudden access spirits and energy's and what his role is in the world with this new sensitivity. I will say, this documentary is very non-threatening. Many films on this topic, at some point, stray from the underlined purpose and try to drive home an agenda or ideology. Frankly, this was just an honest movie about a scared and insecure man just trying to save his relationship with the woman he loves while trying to figure out why the hell all of the sudden he can experience and see things he'd only read about or seen in movies. My take away form this film is something that hit and stuck with me towards the end. Jonas was at with a Native American family going on a vision quest. There was a baby with the father and the baby was so energetic and full of life- soaking in all that was around him and the father was so quiet and patient. I loved the dynamic because the father knew the baby was experiencing and learning all the new things around him, things the baby has never seen. It reminded me of Jonas and his quest for knowledge. For me- what's the difference between a baby being introduced to a new world full of things he's never seen, smelled, felt, tasted, or heard before and the world for Jonas now, which is full of new senses for him to learn and experience. Who are we to judge someone's journey when we don't have the experiences to relate or compare to his? I also learned that in all the Native American languages, there is no term or word for "goodbye", only "til next time". How lovely. So, with that said, til your next film, Jonas Elrod.

It was interesting reading one of the other reviews on here that hits on how fraudulent Elrod seems in the first half of this documentary. I felt exactly the same way - that Elrod is a guy who either lives in a fantasy prone world or is outright hoaxing to make a quick buck. In fact I felt this way so much that after the first 30 minutes or so I kind of quit watching and started surfing the net on my computer instead while the documentary kept playing to itself in the background.I'm glad I didn't turn it off.Around the hour mark the documentary takes a turn, with Elrod heading out on a sort of spiritual quest, and gradually it caught my attention again. All talk of what he purportedly experiences goes away and instead he's just shown exploring a variety of spiritual groups from a new age mind control retreat, to a Buddhist center and finally a Native American vision quest in the forest.Ultimately the film becomes a message that all spiritual pursuits are probably just stumbling attempts pointing towards a single truth of the human condition. Elrod doesn't purport to comprehend this truth (he just calls it God) but he seems joyful enough to have come to the realization that it can't help but make the viewer feel a little uplifted with him.I should note that I'm agnostic bordering on atheism and I take vehement offense at any film that tries to preach to me. "Wake Up" did not, so even though the Christian concept of God is discussed through the first half of the film as Elrod's primary belief system, this is not a documentary that proselytizes in any way... so all you atheists out there are safe. So if you watch the documentary to the end, the question of whether Elrod is hoaxing or not kind of becomes moot. It becomes apparent that this is a film about human nature, inclusion and interconnectedness instead. It's about a journey away from organized religion and towards personal spirituality. Elrod may be a fictional protagonist heading towards this conclusion or he may legitimately believe in his experiences but it doesn't really matter because it still makes for a fairly engaging quest.

I agree with timmyhollywood's review on this documentary. It was boring and very poorly thrown together. I expected to see more concrete examples of his connections with spirits, like in the movie sixth sense. The only interesting part of the movie was the interview with Roger Nelson on his Global Consciousness Project, which has been collecting data from randomly generated numbers for 12 years. They claim that there is a connection between randomly generated numbers and world events, it is an interesting theory. However, I am skeptical.I'm disappointed that Netflix has a 3 star rating on this film. Skip this film and watch Tom Shadyac's 'I Am' documentary, which is also available on Netflix and much more inspiring.

Like another reviewer here, I have to question the veracity of Elrod's claim that he sees people (and colors, and other things) that others cannot see. For someone who woke up one day to experience these phenomena, he seems remarkably incurious as to why it is occurring. Although the documentary purports to take us along on Elrod's journey to do just that, it ends up sidetracked in a morass of new-age spirituality that has little to do with the specific phenomena that occur to Elrod. As a viewer, it's frustrating to watch Elrod avoid the simple and most obvious questions that would arise by placing oneself in his shoes.For example, Elrod (early in the film) speaks to a therapist (psychiatrist? Not sure as I don't believe the gentleman was identified). He tells the therapist that he (Elrod) can see a woman standing behind him (the therapist). He seems troubled, which is understandable. Yet we never see Elrod wonder what that woman's presence indicates. Does she want to tell him something? Is she in pain? Is she threatening? The viewer is only left to wonder, because that's one of the last times Elrod addresses a specific instance.For the balance of the documentary, we see Elrod visit a series of spiritual guides, who offer him little in the way of answering what or why this is happening to him. They offer platitudes about embracing the change in his life but it does little to resolve the question about what is happening to him or what the phenomena are.As a viewer, I don't expect necessarily to get to the bottom of Elrod's experience, but I expect him to at least engage the obvious questions. At the end, Elrod seems happy but nothing along the way occurs to him that would logically explain his transformation from the muttering, troubled person at the beginning of the film. Perhaps Elrod preferred not to end on a down-note or at least not at the same place he started three years prior, but it seemed like a ham-handed attempt to appear cheerful after his journey, rather than as logically confused as he leaves his viewer.