When you see Nicholas Cage fronting a film you can never fully predict what kind of performance you are going to get.
Will it be silent like Willy’s Wonderland or the batsh*t insanity of Mandy or the Wicker Man reboot?
For A24’s latest output Dream Scenario, its a bit of mixed bag of Cage.
Here he plays family man and college professor Paul Matthews, who gets cancelled after his students and others start seeing him in their dreams and nightmares.
It starts off quite harmless, as he just watches in the background but then as his anger rises at this weird situation, his actions become murderous, in the dream world. Paul just wants to be an author but hasn’t got the drive to start his book, and while his world is turned upside down he weirdly spies an opportunity for self-publicity. I suppose all publicity is good publicity…
Dream Scenario may sound high concept, but it is more of a black comedy with horror elements than anything else.
It may not get weirder than when Paul is told to leave a dinner party at a friend’s because the wife has been seeing him in her dreams. I mean as excuses go that’s quite something.
At times it is laugh out loud funny, with a sprinkle of haunting moments and a wider commentary on cancel culture.
Cage gives a layered performance which is quite relatable at times, as anyone can get cancelled at anytime for something far less outlandish than this.
Director Kristoffer Borgli gives Dream Scenario a rough and at times dreamy quality. The scenario is bizarre but the filmmaker makes the characters quite relatable.
Dream Scenario is a fascinating, funny and weird watch.
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