The bizarre condition "anaesthetic awareness" renders sedated patients fully conscious when they're going under the knife. It's not nice.
However, the medical predicament most cinema-goers risk will be the splitting of the sides such is the barking madness of this inept thriller.
Hollywood's premier charisma vacuum Hayden Christensen is Clayton Beresford Jr, a billionaire Manhattan philanthropist with a dodgy ticker.
He's head-over-heels with Samantha (Alba), the doe-eyed personal assistant of his coldly controlling mother Lilith (Olin), who's unaware of the illicit relationship.
When a donor becomes available, she wants her personal heart specialist Arliss Howard to perform the transplant because - "his hands have been inside presidents."
However, Clayton insists his lunchtime fishing partner and surgeon buddy Jack Harper (Howard) gets the gory gig...despite four malpractice suits lodged against him.
The moment of truth arrives when, moments after Samantha and Clayton have tied the knot and are consummating the nuptials, his buzzer goes off informing him a heart is ready.
It appears to be a routine operation but the anaesthetic mysteriously fails... and Clayton is left paralysed yet able to feel every sensation as his rib cage is jacked open.
The kindest thing to be done with this debilitating excuse for a thriller would be to turn the life support off and let it gently slip away.
Falling firmly into the "so bad it's good" bracket, debut writer-director Joby Harold cannot leave a single item unburdened by spurious meaning.
Christensen's character wanders the wards dispensing out-of-body detective work and the plot piles on the implausibilities so they end up in a line longer than an NHS waiting list.
Alba is simply hopeless, Howard looks like he'd rather be someone else while Christensen's banal billionaire benefactor is more Milky Bar Kid than Richard Branson.
However, you do have to hand it to the regal Lena Olin for agreeing to dress up as a nun.
Awake? More like asleep by the final reel.
Tim Evans
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