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Regular readers of my blog will know that I like to order every new film that I watch for posting in a big list every December. I have to tell you that this film is currently sitting quite low down on the ranking, resting between Cocaine Bear and Disney’s recent Haunted Mansion.

This certainly isn’t because its a bad movie though, not at all. Dream Scenario is an intelligent, imaginative, well performed and tightly plotted film. It’s just that I didn’t enjoy it. I actually found it quite unsettling. It’s positioning isn’t for the same reasons as Cocaine Bear and Haunted Mansion which were fun but flawed. Quite the opposite; this is is not flawed but neither did I think it was much fun.

Interestingly I get the feeling that my opinion is going to make me the outlier on this one. The movie is actually billed as a dark comedy and as you can see from the poster The Hollywood Reporter stated that Nicholas Cage has never been funnier. (Although that is actually ridiculous, have they not seen Raising Arizona or Kick-Ass?) I can totally recognise that there are smart moments of humour here and I did laugh a couple of times but taking the film as a whole this is swamped by the oppressive nature of what is happening to the central character. There is a set piece where Cage’s protagonist is seen in a clumsy tryst that people in my screening clearly thought was hilarious but I found it really awkward and discomforting for several reasons that others could evidently get past in a way I didn’t.

The set up is around Cage’s Paul, an unexceptional man who suddenly starts turning up in people’s dreams. Rather than it just being those who have met him though, it is various individual’s from all over the world and the phenomenon soon makes him into a bit of a trending celebrity. It is all innocuous at first but then the version of him that keeps invading random people’s night time imaginings turns violent and abusive and people start to become quite scared. He finds that his job as a tenured professor become untenable and strangers start to take strong offence at his presence in public places because of a hatred he has done nothing to merit.

The comparison between this fantasy conceit and real world events is clear. It is not overplayed but it is here, as a metaphor for cancel culture that everything becomes quite alarming. The power of the population’s capacity to turn on someone because of what they think they are and what they perceive they have done, in this case when the individual in question is unarguably innocent, is quite frightening.

I have a recurring conversation with my wife, who cannot get on with horror films and doesn’t understand why others enjoy being scared by them. My response has always been that being taken to the heights of human emotion is exhilarating and that audiences watch these types of films for similar reasons that people like a good weepy. I do have an appreciation of where she’s coming from though because if I see something that brings me down like this, where they is no catharsis or bittersweet resolution, then I don’t like that as a viewing experience myself. It’s not often I have this response to a film, the last time was with 2016’s little known Alex Lawther film Departure, but when it hits me it can be quite profound.

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The Ripley Factor:

Women actually play a large part in this film, some in a slightly stereotypical way but others very naturalistically. Julianne Nicholson, who was great in Mare of Easttown, plays Paul’s wife very sympathetically. (As an actor she always looks to me like she just stepped out of a 70s Oscar winner – not sure I can tell you why.) Mentioned has to also go to Lily Bird and Jessica Clement as his two daughters. It is significant to the story that Paul is the only man in his immediate family and this undoubtedly leads to some very male frustrations and feelings of inadequacy when his life starts spiralling out of control. It is no accident, I’m sure, that his professional rival is also a woman. Wrapped up in here is some commentary on fragile masculinity and perceived emasculation and that I did like.