Written by Cameron Geiser

There is no better medium of expression than film for translating the absurd, abstract, and often impossible nature of dreams… and nightmares. Thus it is with bemused joviality that I bring you the strangeness of writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario. The film focuses on the almost offensively bland college professor Paul Matthews, played by Nicolas Cage. Paul is awkward, neurotic, and bumbling, and he’s also begun to appear in people's dreams. It's a slow drip of rather benign cameos initially, in one of his daughter's dreams he stands by idly as she floats away uncontrollably. Then his students and colleagues begin to have dreams with Paul usually walking through whatever scene is playing out in their dreams. Things begin to take a turn once he starts becoming more and more recognizable on local, national, and international scales.

Dream Scenario is a curious film where each scene brings more questions to the forefront without answering a single one before moving on. Mystery, as it turns out, is good. In fact, it's what got me interested in this film, but I can't help but feel that the script could have cooked for just a bit longer. Answers to the questions being posed by the film aren't exactly what I'm looking for, but when the credits rolled it felt like the ideas and concepts at play could have been plied for more narrative opportunities. Though I appreciate the film a good deal for the way it goes about its own story. For example, there's a tangible film grain that helps to mesh better with our collective memories, which feels right given the film's nature in toying with reality and possibly the supernatural. The dream sequences are also filmed in the same fashion as those taking place in the real world which makes you question each new scene to tell if it’s just benign moments in everyday life, or if something unnatural is just around the corner waiting to flip your expectations.

While not every experiment here lands, *Dream Scenario* has enough to work with to entertain and intrigue audiences for its entire duration.

As more and more people begin having dreams starring Paul, the film has some lighthearted fun with the concept. After a while though the subtext of fame, internet celebrity, and how to handle being a public person becomes the conflict within the family. Paul, as you may have guessed, doesn’t handle it well. He's literally, and figuratively, his own worst enemy. As his fame grows, the version of him that invades others’ dreams becomes increasingly awful. Suddenly, instead of his dream avatars simply observing, they become everything people are afraid of. His fame becomes infamy and he can't even hold classes as his students are afraid of him. It's a fun turn as the whole film’s aesthetic from the editing choices to the style of humor, everything has been creeping into that sense of abstract unease that I like to call Lovecraftian-lite. It's a weird little movie that somehow ends on a charming note despite the cynicism of corporate power that invades the final ten minutes.

Like Mandy, Pig, Renfield, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Dream Scenario is another unexpected winner for Cage in this career revival of his. With the understandable exception of Renfield, lately, Cage's more fascinating turns in the world of performance have been the smaller choices he makes as an Actor. After decades of going over the top and beyond the pale with his bigger roles (Face/Off comes to mind), it’s refreshing to see him slow down and choose either more retrospective roles or something entirely new for him. Dream Scenario does just that. It takes the fully meme-able actor and makes him disappear into the character of Paul Matthews, entirely blotting out the celebrity that is Nic Cage. Hopefully, Cage chooses a few more flicks with oddball charm like this one before he officially retires. What do you have to lose, Nicolas? Get weird with it!

Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.