Dream Scenario - A film that left me with mixed feelings

I have always thought that the A24 production company is unique, I think they focus on bringing us totally distinctive things and it is enough to see the list of film productions under their belt to realize that we will not see films that we can consider more of the pile, and well, when I say distinctive I mean in part that they are probably not films for all audiences. In that list we can see movies like Hereditary, The Witch, Midsommar, The whale and Moonlight, but the list extends with other titles that you will surely recognize.

So starting from the idea that we are facing a production company that has been able to give us films that will remain for history, or well, at least as far as my tastes are concerned, I decided to see Dream Scenario, a film of the year 2023 directed by Norwegian Kristoffer Borgli who frankly had not on the radar, in fact, doing a little research I realized that he has only directed 3 films in his career. This film stars Nicolas Cage, primarily, but also features Julianne Nicholson and Michael Cera. The genre is horror comedy and satire.

In this film we see an ordinary university professor, he has a fairly traditional family, in that sense life does not seem to be bad and although at times he feels that he has not had great achievements in his life, he does not seem to be having a bad time, after all, he pays his bills and is doing well in his job. One day in the morning, his daughter mentions to him that she had a dream in which he appeared, she was in trouble, but he simply did nothing, he just stood there watching everything happen without lifting a finger. His daughter's dream puzzled him, but after all it was just a dream, so it was nothing transcendent.

So when he arrived at work some students mentioned that they also saw him in their dreams, they were actually nightmares because they were always in trouble, but the professor did absolutely nothing, he was always there witnessing everything without lifting a finger. All this goes unnoticed as a coincidence, but the matter becomes more and more intriguing as the number of people who dream about the professor even without ever having met him becomes bigger and bigger. This situation begins to generate problems in the professor's personal life, as it gradually becomes a chaos as far as interpersonal relationships are concerned.

At a certain point, such a phenomenon goes viral even to the point that the professor becomes a kind of celebrity, appears on television and is even contacted by a company that you were interested in him to take advantage of his situation, the professor has always wanted to publish a book, so the mentioned company could help him in that.

But the problem with the dreams increased because from one moment to another the professor not only appeared in the dreams as he did before, but he began to participate sexually or to attack to death. Although it seems absurd (to me it is) considering that they were only dreams, the professor's life becomes a nightmare as he gained rejection from society in general and even from his own family, it was a situation that was not easy to deal with.

Dream Scenario is a film that handles intrigue quite well, and although comedy is present it is not conventional, it can be dark, absurd and uncomfortable. I in particular was growing skeptical as the film progressed as the plot was not entirely convincing to me. I waited until the end of the movie out of mere curiosity to see if we would understand the reason for the dream phenomenon, but the truth is that the movie never focused on that, rather it focused on the difficulties that the professor went through in his private and public life while living such a circumstance.

Nicolas Cage's performance is very good, he gave life to a teacher and father of a family who had certain insecurities or nonconformities that also has a very particular attitude and personality, he did quite well and in fact I would say that it is one of the performances that I have liked most of him.

This film left me with several questions which I regretted not having understood, I would have liked to know what caused such a phenomenon with dreams, perhaps it was an argument that from the paranormal point of view had the opportunity to be developed and exploited, but as I mentioned, the film focused on something else. I must say that Dream Scenario is not a movie for everyone, you have to be patient with the low pace it has, but I think it can be sustained until the end, as far as I'm concerned it left me with mixed feelings.

I give this movie a score of 6.5/10. Omar had the pleasure of writing to you and it was a pleasure to share with the community. Greetings!