Before I Wake (2018) - Review
Originally published August, 2018Whenever a movie decides to focus on dreams, my interest is piqued. Dreams provide films the opportunity to go crazy with surreal imagery and bizarre atmospheric story-telling. It's what makes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stand out above all the other hopelessly-romantic movies about pathetic 20-somethings who whine too much about their lives and are too dysfunctional to maintain a relationship. The portrayal of dreams are also what made A Nightmare on Elm Street a horror classic with too many sequels, and what made The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez, a watchable horror movie that's slightly memorable. Before I Wake markets itself as a horror movie capable of capturing something as creepy and surreal as Elm St and The Cell, but does it succeed?
In my 1922 review, I mentioned how Netflix has become extremely active in producing its own content, including horror movies. I also mentioned how 1922 was a bit of a disappointment—Thomas Jane was the best thing about it. I didn't expect to find yet another Netflix horror movie with Thomas Jane so soon, and I also didn't expect to for him to be, yet again, one of the few good qualities of the movie. While I love that Thomas Jane is getting more work, if this is the pattern of quality to Netflix horror movies, he may need to find work elsewhere for a while.
Pros
Thomas Jane
Jacob Tremblay is a great young actor who manages charm you and keep you invested in his story
The premise of a boy with living dreams and foster parents still healing from the death of their son is an interesting one
The first half of the movie
Early scenes with the Canker man
Cons
Thomas Jane's hair
The second half of the movie
Too much suspension of disbelief beyond the unbelievable nature of the boy's powers
Too much Canker Man
Exposition dumps
Formulaic pacing, plot, and characters
Climax
Dumb solutions for the sake of a nice ending
Plot & Thoughts
Jessie (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane) are two pleasant and somewhat-bland people who can somehow afford a massive house on a nurse's salary and whatever it is Mark does for a living. They're nice and well-meaning, but Jessie still (understandably) has some baggage about her son who drowned in their bathtub, a few years ago. After going to counseling groups for a couple years, she and her husband have finally decided they still want to have kids. Unfortunately for them, biological (and plot) reasons prevent them from having kids of their own. Thus, they begin to foster a young boy, named Cody, with the intention of adopting him later if it all works out.
Cody (Jacob Tremblay) is a well-mannered and kindhearted 8-year-old boy with a secret: when he sleeps, his dreams come to life. Well, only parts of his dreams come to life, because either this kid has very simple, boring, recurring dreams about butterflies and dead kids, or only specific details of his dreams (that suit the needs of the film's plot) come to life. Regardless, the boy's powers are incredible, magical, and wonderful to everyone around who sees them while he sleeps, so long as his dreams stay positive. If he has nightmares, however, terrible things start appearing, including a monster he calls the "Canker Man." Since he doesn't have much control over what he dreams about, this has forced Cody to jump from one foster home to another, as most of his foster parents that he's had end up dead, missing, or crazy as a result of his nightmares.
The dead/missing foster parents detail doesn't seem to set off any alarms to the administrators responsible for setting Cody up with new parents. And apparently, they've never seen any of his waking dreams in person when he's stayed in the childcare facility, for what one assumes is weeks at a time. Nope, they just hand this kid with super powers off to the next friendly victims and assume there is nothing wrong. It couldn't be the kid, right?
Things go well enough with Jessie and Mark at first. Both try hard to make Cody comfortable in his new home and to get to know him better. Eventually, butterflies of unrealistic color and quantity start accumulating in their living room at night and then suddenly disappearing. One night, after a conversation with Cody about their now-deceased son, the son magically appears in the living room with the butterflies. When Jessie catches on to the fact that Cody can manifest real things while he sleeps, based on images he sees or sounds he hears, she sees it as an opportunity to bring her dead son back to life in some way or another, despite the protests of "cool dad with a conscience," Thomas Jane. As you might expect of a horror movie, things don't stay pleasant for long anyway, and, soon enough, the dreams start becoming nightmares.
The premise of nightmares coming to life is one of unlimited potential when it comes horror movies. You can create the creepiest, most surreal things imaginable that could rival John Carpenter's The Thing in its brutal horror, because dreams that aren't even nightmares can still be disturbing and wild in their imagery. Before I Wake, takes a much more structured approach to its nightmares; it's structured in a way that is simple, and simply too convenient. All of his dreams end up being mostly the same, about mostly the same people or things in a way that makes it less interesting. The simple nature of the nightmares works at first, but it only works as long as you believe there is more you haven't seen yet. Once it becomes apparent that you've seen all the movie has to offer, a fair amount of the excitement dies with it.
What I'm asking for is a little variety. Variety in the horrors that Cody dreams about, as well as variety in the movie itself. The Canker Man is cool and creepy at first with some good use of practical effects. However, we see too much of him, to the point that it seems like he's the only real threat. This makes it seem like the movie less is about Cody's dreams, and more about this mysterious monster. If this is all they could come up with, they should have just made the movie about him as a Freddy Kreuger figure instead. As the credits rolled, I couldn't help but think about some other cheap horror movies from the early 2000's that followed a similar pacing and format, like As Darkness Falls and Boogeyman. It's certainly not the exact same, and I don't think the filmmakers were influenced by such bland movies, but the storytelling formula, monster themes, and methods are nonetheless there.
Before I Wake is just disappointing. There are far too many contrived details and circumstances sprinkled throughout the movie to completely let go of the lazy writing. Why did the foster care people never raise any eyebrows about this kid, considering this is the third family he's going to? How does he consistently have dreams just about butterflies and nearly nothing else? Why is it not okay for a mom to give a child a prescribed sleeping medication by mixing it in with his milk, but then perfectly reasonable for foster care administrators to force him to sleep with a more potent drug shot straight into his bloodstream? Why won't Thomas Jane wash his hair? Aside from the mystery surrounding Thomas Jane's hair, the answer to all those questions is: it's convenient to the plot and the writers couldn't come up with anything better. They were too proud of their origin story for the Canker Man—which you get to hear at the end in a long, detailed exposition dump—to care about cleaning up any of the messy details in the rest of the movie.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Before I Wake is not a bad movie, but it is still a real let-down. Much like how I felt watching 1922, it's just a deep well, full of missed opportunities. It starts off strong enough with charm and detail that makes it stand out among others like it. A child who dreams up nightmares, and continuously loses people close to him as a result, should provide plenty of creative fuel for a horror movie. However, the charm and creepiness of it wear off by the end in a spectacularly bland, dud of a climax and ending.
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