Come True

Best dream sequences I've ever seen in video. Some bits along the way hint at the ending, but very discretely.

Slow moving, but definitely worth the time.

Canadian movie, it opens with visions of blurred, shadowy male figures with glowing eyes. We sense it is a dream then we see a teenage girl waking up in a sleeping bag on the bottom part of a slide in a town park. Then later by chance she sees an ad on a bulletin board for volunteers for a sleep study. She hasn't been sleeping well, has recurring nightmares, and frequently falls asleep in class. So she snaps at the chance, also because it will pay her.

So the movie goes on and I found it very interesting. There is a 30-odd year old movie called "Jacob's Ladder" and of that movie I wrote "everything in the film depicts dreams, hallucinations, and memories during those few minutes before death, as he is fighting for his life." That was my interpretation and there are things in this movie that remind me of that.

The big reveal, the "twist", comes at the very end of the movie with a message on her cell phone. Intellectually I know what happened during the movie but I can't put it all together in a coherent summary. I don't fully grasp what the filmmaker was depicting. There are certain symbols, like the two times 7:11 and 10:01 which apparently mean something to those who study spiritualism but escape me.

Am I glad I spent the time watching it? Yes, I am, even though I can't fully explain what the movie is saying. Would I watch it again? Probably not. The main actress is interesting, she plays an 18-yr-old (needed for the sex scene) and was probably 20 during filming, but with her short blond hair and youthful features looked almost like my 12-yr-old blond headed grandson. I don't say that in any negative way, I found her to be very appropriate for the role and her acting was very effective.

On DVD from my public library, my wife skipped, not her kind of movie.

Greetings again from the darkness. Anyone who has experienced recurring nightmares understands how they impact not just the time you are asleep, but all waking hours as well. Anthony Scott Burns is the writer-director-cinematographer and is working from a story by Daniel Weissenberger. The film is blend of science fiction and horror, and Burns excels in creating an atmosphere of dread upfront.

Burns kicks things off by immersing us in the dark, troubling dream of high school student Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone, "The Killing"). She wakes up not in her bed at home, but instead wrapped in a sleeping blanket on a local playground. Sarah prefers to sleep in a park or at a friend's house, rather than at her own home for reasons we can infer. Desperate for sleep and rest, she answers an advertisement for a sleep study at the university.

Based on the cars, movie posters, and tech equipment, the film is set in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Even the synth music is of the era, courtesy of Electric Youth and Burns' own Pilotpriest. The music mirrors the film in that it's superb in the beginning, and less effective in the second half. The blue-gray color palette and icy cold weather perfectly complement the unorthodox sleep study, and those who are running it. Jeremy/Riff (Landon Liboiron, TRUTH OR DARE, 2018) is the creepiest while looking like a bearded Harry Potter, though it takes a while to unravel his story. Also present is Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington), who does little more than quietly observe. Allowing this character to play a bigger role could have benefited the story.

The mystique of dreams is what's at play here, and the blinking monitors and concerned look of the scientists all serve their purpose. Unfortunately, it's the dreams that let us down. The shadow man associated with sleep paralysis is on display here, but his glowing eyes amongst the abundance of gray lacked the eerie imagery need to capture my imagination. In fact, I found the dream sequences to drag, even after the first one got my hopes up.

It's highly likely that Burns is a fan of filmmaker David Cronenberg, and we do appreciate the homage to Stanley Kubrick and Rodney Ascher. However, to be truly effective, a sci-fi/horror film, especially one dabbling in pseudo-psychology, must have more than the right look. Lead actress Julia Sarah Stone brings a unique appearance to the role, and she's the reason I stuck with it until the end. My gut feeling is this could have been a world class short film, and it seems probable that I missed a deeper message here. But neither of those was enough to overcome my feeling of boredom during the film's second half. COME TRUE will open in select theaters, digital platforms, and cable VOD on March 12, 2021 courtesy of IFC Midnight

So the entire film is about this girl who almost ran away from home who enlists in a sleep study. They monitor her brainwaves on trippy CRT monitors from the 90s and transform them into images to see what she is dreaming about. More or less everything makes sense until the very end, when the spell is broken and you realize that it is all a pretentious movie with "a message" that you care nothing about at all. I don't want to spoil it, because many people seem to have enjoyed the dream mysticism and symbolism of which the film is full of. Myself, I was intrigued by the obvious plot and was severely disappointed by the ending.

All in all the acting is decent, the pacing is slow, but consistent and the dream sequences, even if they look like something made in a few days on a 3D designer, are pretty cool. What I disliked profoundly is the bait and switch at the end.

If you want to enjoy it, take it as a personal project of the writers to express something personal, like Phantasm was, and give it a try. Just know in advance that nothing truly scary or active will happen and that the film is slowly, very slowly, getting to its point by avoiding it most of the film.

This movie has several things going for it, but ultimately disappoints. The central idea is a good one, and the lead actor gives a strong performance. She's likely to become more well known soon. The cinematography is strong, and the score is good, as is the direction, which owes quite a bit to Kubrick. Where the movie fails is in the writing, and to a lesser extent in the performances of the supporting cast. The dialogue is sometimes trite, and the plot is thin with holes. The end is both predictable and yet somehow even more disappointing than one expects. I don't mean to be harsh; the movie is worth a look. Just be prepared to be let down a bit by it all, in the end.