classicsoncall Review of Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario (2023)

"I feel like I want to apologize for barging into your head like that."

[7/10 · 13 May 2024]

This film had a strangely original concept with various people experiencing dreams with college professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) right in the middle of them as an uninterested bystander. His young daughter Hannah (Jessica Clement) even had one in which she was about to be harmed and her father simply stood by as she awoke before anything happened to her. The story plays out with an entire community, and eventually an entire country dreaming about Paul until those dreams become nightmares with Paul doing horrible things and causing a sort of mass hysteria attributed to a collective subconscious ignited by Paul as his notoriety began to spread. Therein lies what might be the movie's message about groupthink creating victims of uncontrollable forces dominating their lives, as illustrated by the cognitive behavioral class that fearfully walked out as soon as Paul approached too near. To his credit, Paul refused to become a merchandising commodity by turning down a commercial endorsement, but the experience led to a new development in dream science that resulted in a product called Norio that would allow a person to enter the dreams of another on purpose via a dream travel technique. That might have been a nod to the Artificial Intelligence phenomenon that appears to be uppermost in the minds of science and academia today. Paul's professional aspiration of writing a book finally happens when he's published in France with the unsavory title of 'I Am Your Nightmare', so named to capitalize on the hysteria his effect on people who dreamed about him had been. The entire experience leaves Paul virtually living his own nightmare as the life he once had becomes unglued with the dissolution of his marriage and loss of tenure at Osler University. The picture ends on a surreal note with Paul daydreaming a return to normalcy as he imagines reuniting with his wife and stating, "I wish this was real".