TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM // A FILM REVIEW OF "COME TRUE"
What happens after we fall asleep has been a fascinating topic of discussing for as long as we can remember. Why do we dream and do they mean something greater than simply our mind sorting through images and thoughts inside our brain? Sleep Paralysis is also a widely discussed topic, one that may seem like it's straight out of a nightmare for some (Not being able to move either before going to sleep or as you wake up, yet your eyes are wide open). There's also the tales of strange figures that are sometimes seen by people who suffer from sleep paralysis. Filmmaker Anthony Scott Burns (who does much of the heavy lifting as writer, director, cinematographer, part of the visual effects team and co-wrote the score) twists all of the above and spins an alltogether affecting and original new film COME TRUE.
Julia Sarah Stone plays Sarah, an 18-year-old who we meet as she wakes up from a strange dream, lying outside on a playground slide. We don't know why exactly she's not in a bed, but after she sneaks into her family home to get things and hurriedly rushes out before her Mother can catch her, we can safely assume that not all is rosy in the home situation. Needing a place to stay at night, she signs up for a sleep study that takes place over the course of 2 months. She, along with other participants, are hooked up to electrodes and studied while they sleep. They can't be told what they're looking for or even why exactly they are there. Sarah's dream patterns are of particular interest, as she has some very spooky dreams. She doesn't often dream of typical day to day things. Instead, she has shadowy nightmares, filled with a whole lot of stranger things.
One of the researchers named Jeremy (Landon Liboiron) becomes so taken with Sarah that he begins to follow her around and, to say the very least, is very creepy about it. It's hard to ever side with Jeremy because he is, at best a stalker and all-around creepy guy and at worst, well, a stalker and an all-around creepy guy. Still, he becomes Sarah's confidant, her window inside of this strange test she's walked into. We switch from their creepy dream worlds to what is happening in the actual study and how they start to bleed over each other. I won't say anymore because this slow-burn midnight horror special is a very exciting film to watch. It's gripping in its unsettling nature and Burns has a marvelous eye for building a horror show around them. The imagery is truly unsettling and the story seems to beg for multiple viewings. There are things that you can pick up on after seeing it again that may slip past your mind and the lead performance of Julia Sarah Stone is a gripping way in. What might make you rethink that decision is a last minute twist that's so horribly bad it almost derails the entire film. Which is truly a shame, as the film is just so good up until then. So, don't let that keep you from seeing it once or twice. COME TRUE takes the science of dreams and the science fiction of dreams and melds them together in one giant creepy maze, well worth the ticket price of entry.
GRADE: B+
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Anthony Scott Burns STARRING Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Carlee Ryski, Christopher Heatherington, Tedra Rogers. MUSIC BY Electric Youth and PilotPriest NOW PLAYING IN SELECT CINEMAS, IN DIGITAL CINEMAS AND VOD.