From Jeremy Kibler

Is Nicolas Cage popping up in your dreams again? Well, he definitely will be after Dream Scenario, an oddball, wryly hilarious dark comedy if there ever was one. Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli has two films out this year, and this is his English-language follow-up to Sick of Myself, a cutting, cruelly funny, and compelling character piece about a narcissistic pathological liar desperately competing for sympathy and validation to be a victim. Making for a great compare-and-contrast companion, Dream Scenario is about the least interesting person in the world who then finally gets noticed for being passive.

Casting Nicolas Cage as a remarkably unremarkable nobody is the first masterstroke. He plays the very blah Paul Matthews, a tenured college professor and a family man with a wife, Janet (a superb Julianne Nicholson), and two daughters in leafy suburbia. One morning, Paul’s daughter tells him that she had a dream where he was in it but didn’t do anything. After that, people from his past, his students, and random strangers begin seeing Paul in their dreams — again, he’s just walking by and not doing anything of note (i.e. not helping during an earthquake or the threat of a crocodile). Paul becomes something of a celebrity, even being seen in a young woman’s sex dream, until that fame sours. The collective dreams later turn into nightmares where the dreamers are scared for their safety when Paul, in real life, enters the room.

This concept is so intriguing that the film can’t help but eventually paint itself into a corner. Even so, Dream Scenario is surprising for a long time and finds new avenues into familiar ideas with the weirdness of Charlie Kaufman and the chilly, formal aesthetic of Yorgos Lanthimos. Much of that has to do with Borgli’s blackly comic tone and the crisp but austere photography by Benjamin Loeb. Making us laugh but still feeling off-kilter, the dreams that people have begin normally with a bizarre, surreal, often viscerally violent tweak. A Talking Heads suit hilariously even figures into someone’s dream.

Borgli finds an ingenious way into exploring the nature of fame and celebrity, the dichotomy between reality and dreams, and the alienation created by cancel culture. In one of the funniest sections, Paul gets chosen to meet with a branding company CEO, Trent (Michael Cera), in hopes that it will jumpstart his book. Mind you, Paul only has an idea for a book, but nothing written and no publisher in mind, however, the best sponsorship Trent and partner Mary (the always-hilarious Kate Berlant) can get Paul is with Sprite. Another amusing detail is a photo opp having Paul pose with a Freddy Krueger glove. Near the end, there is what feels like a short film unto itself involving a device used by influencers; it is pitch-perfect cultural commentary but almost feels divorced from where the film was initially heading. 

Never one to phone in the work, Cage melts into the mild-mannered role—and never lets on that this is a comedy—and almost calls to mind his work as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. He makes Paul a sympathetic loser, and Cage is technically precise that his portrayal of a milquetoast bore somehow never feels mannered or phony. Often very funny but also quite sad, Dream Scenario is an existential horror film through an absurdist lens with yet another great, unusually human-sized Nic Cage performance.

Rating: 4/5

Dream Scenario screened at the Philadelphia Film Festival and is now in theaters.

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