Review: Dream Scenario

Image courtesy of A24.

If Charlie Kaufman wanted to make a film about our self-devouring culture that focused on everything from cancel culture and viral sensations to social-media groupthink, it would likely look something like "Dream Scenario," a proudly weird, occasionally frightening, and overall compelling new film from Kristoffer Borgli that carries on the recent tradition of making Nicolas Cage the star-du-jour for all things bizarre.

In the film, Cage plays Paul Matthews, a nondescript, tenured evolutionary biology professor whose classes appear to leave students unengaged. Suddenly, for seemingly no reason, Paul begins popping up in people's dreams - and not just those with whom he's familiar. In some sort of unexplainable psychological phenomenon, Paul makes appearances in dreams of thousands of people, many of whom he has never met. In all of the dreams, he - at first, at least - plays a passive role, a passerby to a nightmare or unusual nocturnal escapade.

As a result, he finds his star on the rise and hopes to use his newfound fame to publicize a book he has long dreamed of writing, but hasn't actually begun. His wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), appears unsure whether his becoming a celebrity is a good thing, and he is soon contacted by a strange advertising agency led by Michael Sera known as Thoughts? that wants him to act as the spokesperson for Sprite.

Paul's insecurities and some of the early sequences involving his awkward encounters with people in whose dreams he has appeared are quite funny, especially a failed sexual interlude that is interrupted by flatulence. For the first half of the film, we are in Kaufman territory, whereas the film takes a much darker turn during its second half and one of the film's producers, director Ari Aster, appears to be an influence, notably his own strange film from earlier this year, "Beau is Afraid."

As people's dreams containing Paul soon become nightmares that feature much more overt acts from the professor - mostly violent ones - his status as an overnight celebrity soon turns into one as a pariah. His car is defaced, he is attacked in a diner after refusing to leave to make the other patrons more comfortable, and he is not allowed to attend his daughter's theater performance at the local high school.

During one sequence, a group of his students - whom he attacked in their dreams - take part in a ritual meant to relax them in which a counselor brings Paul into the room with them and asks him to slowly step forward. When they flee in a panic and then shout at him as he walks toward his car - which has the word "Loser" scrawled onto it - he notes to the counselor that his students are overdramatizing the fact that his presence is a trauma, adding that everything from an argument to being faced with uncomfortable topics has become trauma in the modern age, thereby minimizing actual traumatic events.

One of the things that "Dream Scenario" does best is capture the current age of overnight celebrity and the social media - and otherwise - mobs that ensue when the crowd tires of one's celebrity. Paul is completely helpless to the fact that he appears in people's dreams - and that his presence later becomes violent - but he is ostracized and has his life ruined as a result. 

A scene that had me nodding my head in disturbed recognition late in the film involves scientists figuring out how to enter others' dream-spaces and corporations then utilizing this to sell products subconsciously, reminding me of the subliminal capitalist messaging in John Carpenter's brilliant "They Live." The thing that makes "Dream Scenario" effective, often hilarious, and frightening is how possible all of its absurdist twists and turns feel in today's surreal age.

If there's any criticism to be made here, it's that "Dream Scenario" doesn't quite stick the landing in the way that one of its cinematic kinfolk - such as "Being John Malkovich" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - do. At the film's end, it appears as if the filmmakers didn't quite know where to go next or how to resolve Paul's dilemma, so the film just ends. Regardless, "Dream Scenario" is an unusual and engaging social commentary mindbender with another memorable performance by Cage, who has revitalized his career to become one of cinema's most intriguing weirdos.