Director/Screenplay – Kristoffer Borgli, Producers – Ari Aster, Nicolas Cage, Tyler Campellone, Jacob Jaffke & Lars Knudsen, Photography – Benjamin Loeb, Music – Owen Pallett, Visual Effects – Alchemy 24 (Supervisor – Benoit Briere), Special Effects Supervisor – Mark Ahee, Production Design – Zosia MacKenzie. Production Company – Square Peg.
Cast
Nicolas Cage (Professor Paul Matthews), Julianne Nicholson (Janet Matthews), Dylan Gelula (Molly), Michael Cera (Trent), Tim Meadows (Brett), Lily Bird (Sophie Matthews), Jessica Clement (Hannah Matthews), Marnie McPhail Diamond (Claire), Paula Boudreau (Sheila Hansen), Dylan Baker (Richard), Krista Bridges (Carlota), Kate Berlant (Mary), Nicholas Braun (Brian Berg), Al Warren (Chris), David Klein (Andy), Maev Beaty (Naomi), Liz Adjei (Avery)
Plot
Paul Matthews, a middle-aged professor of evolutionary biology, discovers that people everywhere are suddenly beginning to see him in their dreams. He never seems to do anything except just stand there or pass through. When he bumps into old girlfriend Claire and she publishes an article about the phenomenon, it gains the attention of news media. Overnight, Paul finds he has become famous and that everyone recognises him, including having a stalker break into his house. He seeks to leverage his newfound fame to publish a book. Paul then finds that he has turned from something harmless into a nightmare figure and that he is assaulting and killing people in their dreams. This has him ostracised from his workplace, his daughter’s school and beaten up in public.
Dream Scenario was the second film from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, who had gained modest festival acclaim with the black comedy Sick of Myself (2022). The film is co-producer by Ari Aster, director of recently acclaimed hits such as Herediatry (2018), Midsommar (2019) and Beau is Afraid (2023), who brought Borgli’s script and was originally intending to direct the film himself before deciding Borgli was more suited to the job.
I used to think that Nicolas Cage took on all manner of bizarre, edgy roles because he was doing an Eric Roberts and said yes to every script that was handed to him because he had alimony or some unpaid tax bills owing to the IRS, but increasingly I have come to the conclusion that he does he because he loves it. See the body of work since the mid-2010s that contains roles such as Left Behind (2014), Mom & Dad (2017), Between Worlds (2018), Mandy (2018), Color Out of Space (2019), Jiu Jitsu (2020), Pig (2021), Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021), Willy’s Wonderland (2021), The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) and Sympathy for the Devil (2023) to name the most obvious. Here Cage confirms himself as the reigning king of weird cinema by taking on a role in which he shucks any glamour that another Hollywood star might have insisted on – he appears playing a character roughly around his real age (59) with balding head, glasses and middle-aged paunch.
Dream Scenario had a conceptual weirdness that gets you from the opening scene as daughter Lily Bird sits by the pool while Nicolas Cage rakes leaves in the background and she is interrupted as a pair of keys falls from the sky and smash the glass table beside her, followed by a shoe landing in the pool and then she levitates, all while Cage nonchalantly stands by raking leaves. Thereafter, as the premise starts to logically play out with people contacting Cage telling him how they have been dreaming about him and the phenomenon gaining widespread attention and news coverage, Dream Scenario hits in with a wild absurdism. The film I was reminded of was Being John Malkovich (1999), which has something of the same nonchalantly deadpan approach to an absurd situation. Or perhaps some of the films of Michel Gondry – this could be a darker, less whimsical variation on The Science of Sleep (2006) maybe.
Nicolas Cage as Paul Matthews – with loser graffitied on his vehicle in the backgroundNicolas Cage rakes leaves in the opening dream scene as daughter Lily Bird levitates
There is also something bitingly satiric to the film. Some the most sharply on the ball scenes are those where Nicolas Cage goes to the publishing house headed by Michael Cera to pitch his book on evolutionary biology only to encounter a trio of millennials wishing to sell everything in terms of his notoriety. Towards the end of the film we see commercials for a device that allows people to enter the dreams of others – at a later point, after using the device, we see Nicolas Cage in a dream where people turn up trying to sell him sneakers and energy supplements.
The second half of Dream Scenario undergoes a tonal shift and becomes something else altogether. Here Nicolas Cage becomes a figure of fear, seen torturing, assaulting and killing people in their dreams. There is much analogy to Freddy Krueger and Cage is even asked to pose with a glove of steel claws for a publicity shot at one point. However, the real purpose of the film becomes apparent here – it is work about instant celebrity in the media-saturated world and then how things can turn around on a person often without their having done anything at all and they become a victim of Cancel Culture. It is in these scenes that the film strikes a nerve of naked fear and anxiety particularly well with Cage forced out of his job, banned from attending his daughter’s own school recital, finding his car graffitied ‘loser’ and being beaten up for doing nothing more than eating in a restaurant. The film reaches a quiet ending born perhaps of not quite knowing how to wrap the story up but the journey there is a great one.
(Winner in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2023 list. Winner for Best Actor (Nicolas Cage), Nominee for Best Original Screenplay at this site’s Best of 2023 Awards).
