Director: Alan Friel
A woman opens her eyes on an island she cannot place, surrounded by strangers who claim to know her, and nothing about her own body or memory adds up.
What is Woken about?
Anna comes to on a remote island with no recollection of how she arrived, who the people around her are, or why she is pregnant. The unfamiliar faces treating her with warmth insist they are her husband and her community, and she has little choice but to accept pieces of a life she cannot verify. As she pieces together fragments of her past, the arrival of two badly disfigured outsiders shatters the island's fragile calm. A sudden, violent confrontation follows, and Anna begins to suspect that the isolation around her is not protection but concealment. Her search for the truth pulls back a curtain on a crisis far larger than her own lost memory, one tied to the survival of the human race itself.
Cast & crew
Erin Kellyman anchors the film as Anna, carrying long stretches with only her physical unease to signal how wrong things are before the plot confirms it. Maxine Peake and Peter McDonald bring a controlled warmth to the island's caretakers that curdles believably once cracks appear, while Ivanno Jeremiah's late arrival resets the tension. Director Alan Friel keeps the ensemble small and the setting isolated, which lets the performances carry the dread rather than exposition.
Context & significance
Woken is a joint Irish-Italian production from 2024 that folds body-horror instincts into a slow-burn mystery, closer in spirit to memory-loss thrillers than jump-scare horror. Its 90-minute runtime is deliberately tight, using the island's isolation as both setting and metaphor for a species running out of options. The science-fiction reveal at its center is kept back for most of the film, so the horror and thriller elements do the early work of establishing unease.
Where & how to watch
Woken is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login, presented in Farsi for viewers who prefer a fully localized experience alongside the option to watch with Persian subtitles. The site itself is free to browse, and setting up an account takes a moment before playback begins.