Dream Scenario is categorized as a “horror/fantasy.” Dream Scenario is a dark comedy. I’m not sure who we need to speak to at A24 to fix that, but as I watched this film, this is what I categorized it as—a straight comedy.
The movie is as follows: Paul Matthews (Nicholas Cage) is an average man with a family and a career. He’s a college professor obsessed with his research in evolutionary biology, which I guess is ironic based on what happens to him, while his wife, Janet, is a designer of some sort. That’s not important but I found it cool that they added how her career was affected in all of this. They also have two daughters. It starts with one of the daughter’s having a dream that suddenly turns into a nightmare, in a way. The dream itself isn’t innately odd but her dad, Paul, is in the dream racking leaves and does nothing. He just watches as his daughter floats off. For anyone else, this could be really funny, and it was for me, but from Sophie’s perspective, it was probably terrifying since her dad was there and did not help her. Later, his life starts to get weirder because everyone starts to see him in their dreams doing the same thing—nothing. Absolutely not, to be exact.
For a man like Paul who doesn’t like attention, this all is a bit too much for him until he starts to realize that he can use this as an avenue for his evolutionary biology research and book he has yet to write. I’ve never watched a movie where someone was so passionate about something they thought about doing but had yet to. He was so angry with his former colleague for her seemingly taking his research as her own and writing a book he intended to write.
But back to the movie. The movie mirror social media fame. It’s a slow build, then all of a sudden it seems like everyone wants you, and then one thing happens and it all flutters away. What happens with Paul is a strange anomaly that NO ONE EXPLAINED (I’m talking to you Kristoffer!) but it explains, in an extreme way, how life can crumble someone who wasn’t prepared for the fame. Honestly, I think that girl and her sex dream coupled with the meeting with the marketing agency messed Paul up really bad. It’s still odd that everyone else had a regular dream or nightmare about Paul and she had a sex dream. Also not explained. But if you think about it, his life wasn’t as grand as Paul may have seen it. Now, I hear you. Paul’s like was grand for him. Cage played this man brilliantly. You could see the passion he had in his classroom compared to the students who were required to be in the class. His studies were his life. He loved his wife, his daughters, and his life as it was. Paul saw nothing wrong with his life and I think that led to his downfall. We, as the audience, could see that his wife wasn’t happy, and it goes worse when she loses her opportunity at work and she realizes that she doesn’t dream about Paul while everyone else does. His daughters don’t really feel anything about their dad, which is kind of sad when you think about it. At least in the film, they don’t really have deep feelings for their dad, and then their life was turned upside down when Paul turned.
Then, Paul turns. Nothing seems to be going right in his life, and it seems that because in his real life things are wrong, the dreams he’s in start to follow that pattern. Now, again, this is not a comedy, but I cackled A LOT during this time in the film. What was ridiculous to me was when his wife lost her opportunity at work because people had the bad dreams about Paul. His image was tarnished, but he didn’t even do anything. That’s what baffled me the entire time. His students didn’t want to come to class because he was in their dream strangling them or stabbing them. I liken this to like an R Kelly or Chris Brown situation (and these are my go-to’s because I’m Black) where we question where is the line between the man and his art. The man in their dreams is not the man in front of them. Does he have the potential to be that man? Yes, but he chooses not to be. To be clear, it counts for nothing in the end.
Another thing this movie touched on is how a trend or phenomenon opens the door for other ideas and things. In this case, a company was able to mimic the anomaly but adds ads to your dreams (which would piss me off in real life, but I digress). The creators talk about how unfortunate it is that their invention can after such a terrible experience thousands of people had with Paul in their dreams.
He kind of loses everything, but what we do see at the end is that the one thing that meant the most to him was his wife. I like to think the scene where he floats at the end is the weight he’d been silently holding on being lifted off of him.
A24 movies are always just weird enough that it works and this works. Let me know what you thought of this movie. Did I miss anything? Has Nicholas Cage been weirder to you in another film?? Sound off!
