Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario (2023) is about an ordinary biology professor appearing in the dreams of everyone in the world. Paul Matthews teaches evolutionary biology; nobody takes him seriously, he has been saying for years that he will write a book and has not, and his colleagues take his ideas. One day his daughter says she saw him in a dream. Then his students. Then strangers. Millions of people are dreaming about him, and in the dreams he always does the same thing: nothing. He stands there, watches, and does not intervene. He becomes famous overnight. Interviews, advertising offers, a marketing agency. He tries to use it to get his book written. Then the dreams change. The same man now harms people in them, and millions genuinely start to fear him. That he has done nothing makes no difference; nobody distinguishes. The second half is a story of mass exclusion. The university suspends him, restaurants refuse him, his family suffers. Kristoffer Borgli, who is Norwegian, wrote and directed. Nicolas Cage plays him small, timid and inept throughout, the opposite of the heightened Cage template. It is an A24 production and Ari Aster is among the producers. The dream sequences are deliberately shot as ordinary; there is no strange imagery, just the man standing there, and that is more unsettling. The ending runs long and seems about to finish several times before continuing. It runs 102 minutes. Good for: black comedy, satire, and Nicolas Cage. Less good for: there is one uncomfortable scene and the film does not say anything definite about its subject.