In A24’s surreal new dramedy “Dream Scenario,” Nicolas Cage plays the “most interesting man in the world.” This seems like a given – Cage never experienced a wild reversal that he didn’t embrace with the wildest fervor imaginable – but Dream Scenario imagines Hollywood’s most interesting man as not being interesting at all. In fact, he’s a little boring, a little aggressive, and more than a little unlikeable. Until he appears in everyone’s dreams.
“Dream Scenario,” written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, is a hysterically dark examination of “cancel culture” and all of its sudden highs and equally sudden lows. In the film, Cage plays the role of Paul Matthews, a grumpy, unhappy college professor facing a mid-life crisis. But his crisis comes in a completely different way: he is suddenly the star of his daughter’s bizarre dream. Strangely, he isn’t bothered by the content of her dream, which involves a spooky scenario in which everyday objects fall from the sky like meteorites.
What bothers Paul is that in the dream he does nothing other than rake leaves. Then more people approach Paul with the confession that they have dreamed about him: his ex-girlfriend, his students, hundreds of random strangers who have never met him before. Soon he is an overnight sensation, the man of everyone’s dreams. Paul is overjoyed by the attention, but becomes increasingly frustrated by his dream self’s passivity in all the dreams he hears about. Predictably, everything changes when everyone’s dreams take a dark turn and Paul becomes the world’s No. 1 pariah.
Nicolas Cage plays the unremarkable Paul Matthews, who suddenly becomes the most remarkable man in the world.
A24
Ari Aster produced Dream Scenario and, appropriately, it feels like a member of the same satirical family as Beau Is Afraid. Both are comedies shot like horror films, taking everyday conflicts far beyond the reasonable norm and magnifying every bad feeling until every social faux pas seems like a humiliating jump scare. But while Aster stumbled under the weight of Beau Is Afraid’s ponderous odyssey, Borgli, in his English-language feature debut, delivers a gripping, hilariously funny horror comedy about the perils of celebrity that manages to straddle the line between silly satire and secretly terrible indie theater.
Borgli and his cinematographer Benjamin Loeb shoot the film in a muted, naturalistic color palette, heightening the absurdity of each dream. These scenes play out like horror movies, a little threatening and mostly apocalyptic. In a student’s dream, bodies lie strewn across the classroom floor while tables and chairs fly upwards – while Paul strolls and stoically offers comfort. In another case, a student is chased through a field by a faceless serial killer, and Paul is there too, enjoying the outdoors.
Do these often bad dreams mean something? Borgli doesn’t offer much explanation, although it could be read as a reflection of our collective fear of an increasingly chaotic world – and Paul is there too. But just like the “dream epidemic” of which Paul is the focus, no scientific reason can be found for this phenomenon, nor is there a reason why the dreams suddenly take violent turns at the same time. This is where reality and dreams begin to merge, and the ominous tone that dances at the edges of “Dream Scenario” begins to permeate the rest of the film.
Paul shares a tender moment with his wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson), who is inexplicably one of the few people who doesn’t dream about Paul.
A24
Dream Scenario’s unique tonal tightrope works thanks to Nicolas Cage’s central performance as the thoroughly pathetic Paul. Not since Adaptation has Cage played such a pathetic loser – an acting callback that seems appropriate given both films’ similar reality-twisting narratives. He seems to enjoy playing such a frustratingly ordinary man. Paul is no ordinary slovenly everyman, he is an incredibly arrogant person who firmly believes that he deserves more than his comfortable suburban life. That’s why he believes so joyfully in his new fame and sees it as something he earned, rather than a random phenomenon that just happened to him. And when he ends up getting canceled because of something that’s also out of his control, it’s hard to feel sorry for him. It contributes to Borgli’s clever squabbling of viral fame, a concept so arbitrary, ridiculous and fleeting that it could happen to someone undeserving of it like Paul.
“Dream Scenario” has such a tight, intriguing premise that it inevitably loses momentum once you go beyond it, and the film’s final act seems to struggle to find the same sharp commentary as the beginning. The appearance of other star-studded cameos, including a hilarious Michael Cera as a savvy entrepreneur looking to capitalize on Paul’s late-night fame, overloads “Dream Scenario” with one satirical point too many until it starts to lose the plot.
But even as “Dream Scenario” pushes further into the absurd, it maintains the same ironic view of cancel culture. No, it doesn’t mean anything really new, and yes, it’s just another diatribe against social media. But it’s just as silly and ridiculous as the concept of viral fame it satirizes. And best of all, Nicolas Cage plays the most interesting man in the world in the most absurd way.
Dream Scenario hits theaters on November 10th.
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