Dream Scenario opens in theaters November 10. This review is based on a screening at Fantastic Fest 2023.
Nicolas Cage is already a meme, which makes him the perfect actor to lead Dream Scenario. (That being said, Adam Sandler was also reportedly attached at one point.) The difference here is that within the world of Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s third feature, Paul Matthews (Cage) isn’t an Oscar-winning actor when the story begins. He’s a regular schlub (really a tenured biology professor, but close enough) who’s abruptly flung into the international spotlight when he starts randomly appearing in other people’s dreams.
Borgli’s previous feature, Sick of Myself, chronicled the exploits of a woman who deliberately disfigures herself for sympathy, believing that all attention is good attention, and Dream Scenario digs into the absurdities of notoriety in the social-media era as well. Paul does absolutely nothing to become famous. In fact, in most of these dreams, he’s just a bystander. But he has to ride the roller coaster of adulation and condemnation anyway, evolving from a viral celebrity to an international pariah when his presence in the collective subconscious turns sinister – again, through no action of his own.
This naturally leads to some satire of “cancel culture,” specifically the idea that perceived harm is the same thing as actual violence. Here, Paul is an imperfect avatar; usually, in real life, when someone is being told to leave restaurants and having their car defaced over their public persona, they’ve consciously said something, even if they haven’t done anything. Poor oblivious Paul’s greatest sin is that he enjoys the attention a little too much, which leads to more trenchant commentary on male mediocrity, intellectual vanity, and the simmering resentment that underlies it all.
But the most poisonous venom is saved for the marketing firm that hires Paul with the intention of inserting Sprite ads into the collective unconscious, and the “dreamfluencers” who co-opt the phenomenon for sponsorship dollars. The first half of Dream Scenario features some excellent screenwriting (also from Borgli), which manages to be cutting and satirical while still replicating the verbal patterns of real life. This boiled-frog momentum only takes us three-quarters of the way through the movie, however, leading to a bifurcated ending that has more ideas than it knows what to do with.
Save for a few jokes about farts and bodily fluids (the influence of producer Ari Aster, perhaps?), the humor in Dream Scenario is largely deadpan cringe comedy, delivered by a supporting cast that includes such virtuosos of the form as Tim Meadows, Michael Cera, Kate Berlant, Dylan Gelula, and Nicholas Braun. Julianne Nicholson, meanwhile, plays the straight woman as Paul’s wife Janet Matthews, whose reputation and career suffer collateral damage through their association with her husband. Her role is incidental, as are Lily Bird and Jessica Clement’s as Paul’s daughters; they’re there so he has something to lose, which is fine, if expected.
Borgli’s filmmaking mostly sets Dream Scenario in a recognizable rendering of upper-middle-class East Coast academia, again gradually escalating the film’s surreal nightmare qualities until they escape from clearly defined dream sequences into the “real world.” Cage modulates his whiny, hunched performance based on this same principle, striding through the background of other peoples’ slumber with his long arms swinging like a Sasquatch and a dazed look on his face.
The real version of Paul is always disappointing compared to his nighttime alter ego, which is part of the point. The boogeymen (the film’s version of the New York Post calls Cage’s character “Paultergeist”) we build up in our minds are rarely as dangerous as we think they are when we finally see the pathetic men behind the scary characters. The level of sympathy the film has for these men is the most provocative thing about it – if you can call withering disregard “sympathy.”
