Stay Awake Review: Opioid Addiction Drama Settles for Easy Insights and Suspense

Jamie Sisley’s film looks at its serious subject matter through a maudlin lens.

Stay Awake
Photo: MarVista Entertainment

Writer-director Jamie Sisley’s Stay Awake, a feature-length expansion of the filmmaker’s short of the same name from 2015, looks at its serious subject matter through a maudlin lens. The film’s title refers explicitly to Michelle (Chrissy Metz), whose opioid addiction routinely finds her nodding off in the backseat of the family car on the way to the hospital, as teenage sons Ethan (Wyatt Oleff) and Derek (Fin Argus) sing notable songs to try and keep her conscious. Across repetitive, overwritten scenes that are intent on verbalizing the film’s themes and ideas, Sisley struggles to find a tonal range that might reflect a more complex set of emotions and as such elevated his film above a glorified Afterschool Special.

More metaphorically, the film’s title refers to teenage conscientiousness about extricating oneself from the minimal career expectations of small-town America (here Langford, Virginia). When Ethan gets into Brown University and Derek seems content to remain around Langford, Ethan gives Derek a speech about becoming a “loser” if he stays, the implication being that he might, years down the road, find himself in the same position as their ailing mother. But the leaden and didactic quality of such moments mostly positions Stay Awake as a kind of teaching tool for viewers, especially young ones who may be facing similar dilemmas.

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Blips of interesting stylistic choices crop up here and there, such as the use of swing, jive, and doo-wop music, suggesting that the film might have an interest in thinking about the transformation of teenage life since the often-idealized 1950s. Yet Sisley settles for routine depictions of everything from family quarrels to the unrequited sexual desire between would-be lovers, as when Ethan, who’s closeted, discovers that his first male crush (Maxwell Whittington-Cooper) actually has eyes for his ex-girlfriend (Quinn McColgan). Little of what’s on screen throughout surprises, entices, or enlivens the requisite beats of this coming-of-age drama.

While its performances, especially those by Oleff and Argus, are generally subtle and realistic, Stay Awake falls prey to numerous indie clichés, especially in grittier moments that are meant to display the harsh realities of drug use and addiction. Case in point is a scene in which Ethan and Derek search for a rehab facility and are outraged to discover their prohibitively high cost. In such easy moments, when Sisley is only asking us to share in his characters’ disgust, Stay Awake begs for a more thoughtful approach to its depiction of drug abuse, so as to enliven its literal, linear trudge toward the shallow suspense of whether Michelle will die or be redeemed.

Score: 
 Cast: Wyatt Oleff, Fin Argus, Chrissy Metz, Cree Cicchino, Quinn McColgan, Albert Jones  Director: Jamie Sisley  Screenwriter: Jamie Sisley  Distributor: MarVista Entertainment  Running Time: 94 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2022

Clayton Dillard

Clayton Dillard is a lecturer in cinema at San Francisco State University.

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