Movie Name/Year: Before
I Wake (2016)
Tagline: Fear
your dreams.
Genre: Drama,
Horror, Fantasy
Length: 96
minutes
Rating: PG-13
Production Companies:
Intrepid Pictures, Demarest Films, MICA Entertainment
Producer: Mali
Elfman, Sam Englebardt, Brian Flanagan, David S. Greathouse, Lew Horwitz, Michael
Ilitch Jr., Dale Armin Johnson, William D. Johnson, D. Scott Lumpkin, Trevor
Macy, Julie B. May, Glenn Murray, Melinda Nishioka, Matthew Berkowitz, Marianne
Culbert
Director: Mike
Flanagan
Writer: Mike
Flanagan, Jeff Howard
Actors: Kate
Bosworth, Thomas Jane, Jacob Tremblay, Annabeth Gish, Topher Bousquet, Dash
Mihok, Jay Karnes, Lance E. Nichols, Antonio Evan Romero, Kyla Deaver, Hunter
Wenzel, Michael Polish, Natalie Roers, Courtney Bell, Justin Gordon, Rigby
Flanagan-Bell, Kelsey Phillips, Thad Watkins, Heather Rogers, Ben Jacobs
Blurb from Netflix:
Still mourning the death of their son, Mark and Jessie welcome foster child
Cody into their lives. Soon they discover he has a strange ability.
Selina’s Point of View:
I found Before I Wake
to be predictable and very slow. In fact, it was a horror movie that didn’t
remember to horror until about an hour in.
Granted, there was some significant need to develop the
characters for this story to hit the emotional notes it needed to. I just feel
that they went about it wrong. The small attempts they made to weave thrill in
with the character building felt forced and ineffective. Some of their
background story for certain characters didn’t feel quite right, either.
The death of the couple’s original son, for instance, is
shown through memories. The death of a child in any film can be absolutely
heartbreaking, but in Before I Wake
it feels so overdone that it has almost no effect. I have no doubt that the
director opted to have the death exaggerated due to the way the parents
remember it, but that choice took away all the realism for me. I just kind of
wound up looking at my screen weird.
I’m upset that it’s specifically the directing I had an
issue with. I’m actually a huge fan of Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald’s Game, Oculus). Hush (2016) is one of my all-time
favorite horror/thrillers. I’m not dissuaded. I’m still looking forward to
watching his future, and current, projects.
Out of all 96 minutes of footage, I really enjoyed about 20
minutes of it.
There was one truly amazing aspect to this film: Jacob
Tremblay (Wonder, Room, The Predator).
I believed his haunted performance. He may be young, but he showed a lot of
emotional understanding in his performance. If he continues on in the business,
I believe he can become a household name.
Cat’s Point of View:
I think most of us can relate to
the feeling of dreams manifesting to reality – that’s effectively where de-ja-vu
comes from, is it not? I know that’s the source of mine.
When I was little, it was a
frequent thing for me to have a dream which had an echo in reality at some
point later. You can bet I’m glad that the reverse wasn’t true for me. The
nightmares, thankfully, remained in the realm of dreams.
I’ll never forget the
gobsmacked feeling I had the first time I watched dream events unfold before me
while awake. Of course, as I got older; such dreams have been fewer and further
between.
But, I digress.
I think Mike Flanagan (Absentia,
Ouija: Origin of Evil, Gerald's Game) brought some really disturbing ideas
to the table with this movie. I’m really not surprised that I liked it, given
that I have also thoroughly enjoyed other projects of his such as Hush (2016)
and Oculus (2013).
There were a few bits here and
there that knocked me out of the movie’s spell a little bit, but it was
generally a creepily solid offering. This is definitely one to add in the
category of my own nightmare fuel.
The plot was a bit deeper than I
expected, though I didn’t quite feel right about the way things play out in the
end. The movie leaves the door open for viewer interpretation to some degree.
All in all, this was a solid
spine-tingling addition to our spooky view-fest for the month of October.
Languages
Speech Available:
English
Subtitles Available:
English
Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 61%
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 45%
Metascore - 68/100
Metacritic User Score – 7.0/10
IMDB Score – 6.2/10
Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 2.5/5
Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating
– 3.5/5
Movie Trailer:
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