It’s been a hot minute since I reviewed a crazy-ass Nicolas Cage movie around these parts, so when I heard about him getting surreal in the new A24 movie Dream Scenario, I just had to dip my toe back into the Cage chaos.
In this one, Cage rocks a bald head, a potbelly and a George Carlin beard to play doughy college professor Paul Matthews. Schlubby and pedantic, he lives a forgettably average life with his wife (Julianne Nicholson) and two daughters (Lily Bird, Jessica Clement), who all look like they suffer from some sort of bad-skin disorder. (Don’t be surprised if you feel the urge to buy some Cetaphil after seeing this.) Things get a little odd when people from all over begin having dreams in which Paul drops in and wanders around amiably — not doing much, just letting whatever insane activity (apocalyptic disaster, alligators cornering a gal) take place.
At first, Paul enjoys his newfound celebrity as a special guest in people’s subconscious. He even gets with a branding company (led by a fast-talking, hypebeasty Michael Cera) who wants him to promote Sprite on social media. Paul’s 15 minutes are cut short when, after failing to fully realize one dreamer’s intense fantasy, he becomes Freddy Krueger, terrorizing people in their sleep and turning their dreams into nightmares. It gets to the point where people stop fucking with this dude in real life, citing the trauma he has somehow inflicted on them.
By the time Cage’s character makes a blubbering, insincere apology online for the pain he’s caused, it is clear that Dream is a heady, elaborate take on cancel culture. Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself) apparently became so fascinated with how disgraced celebs are vilified for inadvertently offending people that he made a movie about a guy who is literally considered a menace in people’s minds. Dream is aimed at many targets, from regular folks who ride out fame that’s been thrust upon them (represented by Cage’s attention-seeking scholar) to the audience who embraces them, then immediately discards them when they screw up. Borgli even manages to roast Gen-Z influencers in the third act, as Netflix heartthrob Noah Centineo, Prey heroine Amber Midthunder and Succession cousin Nicholas Braun briefly show up as young hipsters endorsing a new thought-intruding product.
The film is also obviously Borgli crafting his own surreal, Charlie Kaufman-esque satire, even getting Cage (who memorably played a fictionalized version of Kaufman and his “twin brother” in the Kaufman-written Adaptation) to star and produce. Cage is predictably kooky as the awkward, milquetoast, parka-wearing family man who longs to take action — whether it’s saving his family from a deranged intruder or writing a book he has yet to start — but often fails to take the leap. It appears the more he quietly seethes over decisions he regrets, the more it negatively plays out in other people’s dreams.
While this may sound intriguing and ambitious on paper, it doesn’t unfold that way on the big screen. With Borgli throwing a lot of things at ya (and usually doing it in scenes where the camera slowly, almost uncomfortably zooms in), the movie seems unfocused and unwieldy. You know a movie loses steam when it pivots its narrative near the end.
It almost seems like A24 is aware that it has a big ball of whatever-the-hell on its hands and is slipping it into theaters with little to no fanfare. I had to go to the far end of town to attend the only press screening they scheduled for my market, almost as though they didn’t want me to see it. Dream Scenario is proof that even Nicolas Cage doing some oddball Nicolas Cage stuff is not enough to make you forget how all-over-the-place a movie is.
