A film about the lingering legacies of the '60s, Waking the Dead divides its time between the early '70s, when the influence of the activism-oriented counterculture began to wane, and the early '80s, when its influence seemed to have diminished altogether. Though the film occasionally plays as though its dialogue needed another polish, and the abundance of deleted scenes on the DVD version is actually apparent within the film itself, other virtues carry the movie. Both Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly (who turned into a fine actress in the late '90s after too many cheesecake roles) deliver soulful, affecting performances. It's director Keith Gordon's remarkable sense of time and place and the film's sustained melancholy tone, however, that prove the most memorable, using the supernatural to capture an extremely real sense of disillusionment.