Come True - Movie Review
Afternoon everyone!
Looking for a movie recommendation? You've come to the right place... well maybe not this one though... In case you're new to my blog, I keep the majority of the review spoiler-free with anything risky beneath my patented warning line. So read without fear!
The Movie
Written and directed by Anthony Scott Burns, Come True is a 2020 Canadian science fiction horror film starring Julia Sarah Stone and Landon Liboiron.
The film follows eighteen-year-old Sara Dunn, who is haunted by inexplicable nightmares about a shadow man with blazing white eyes. Compounding that, she has a troubled relationship with her mom, which drives her to sleep in parks or at friends' houses. In need of money and a good night's sleep, Sara signs up to be a test subject in a sleep experiment at a local university. Details of the study's goals are kept secret and when Sarah starts experiencing strange side effects, she becomes determined to know what is going on.
The Review
One of the worst things in the world is when a movie seems so good that you let yourself get twisted up tight in it, only to see the ending and feel as though something was stolen from you.
And Come True is truly guilty of that, so much so I am still a little mad about it. I go into detail below the spoiler-line about the 'why's, all I'll say here is that it was like the first 3/4s were one movie and last last 1/4 took such a hard turn that it felt like the original writer quit and they had to scramble to come up with something -- simply put, the ending feels like it belongs to a completely different movie.
But let's start at the beginning. The movie grabbed my attention right away with an eerie dream scene. I was drawn into sympathy for the main character, she has problems at home, is struggling to finish school, to survive her sleepless nights.
I also loved the idea of a shadow man haunting this woman's dreams, and the idea of a sleep study revealing or worsening the young woman's plight.
The movie then deepens the mystery -- the sleep study seems to have strange side effects, the scientists are obviously hiding something, the woman has no one to turn to. It was well done, it was gripping, and then it all failed.
And what a disappointment.
2/10
x PLM
SPOILER WARNING!
Come True started as a movie about dream study and the common appearance of a shadow man, shared across so many restless dreamers. The scientists in the movie, it is revealed, are trying to study this shadow man but their studies seem to cause it to manifest in the real world. The main character, Sara, seems to be the center of it all as she experiences tears of blood, seizures, and more after the sleep study seems to activate something inside her.
Eventually, she seems possessed by this strange anomaly and walks off into the woods, as the scientists follow and watch her dreams, as she encounters not one but dozens of the shadow men, who then snatch away her companions.
Scene cuts. Now she's back in time before she dropped into the possession, having killed one of the scientists, and she now has vampire fangs. Her phone rings. It shows the message: IF YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU'VE BEEN IN A COMA FOR ALMOST 20 YEARS. WE ARE TRYING A NEW TECHNIQUE. WE DON'T KNOW WHERE THIS MESSAGE WILL END UP IN YOUR DREAM. PLEASE WAKE UP.
Turns out it was all just a coma dream.
Record screech.
It just felt like a waste of a good movie about dream study and the common phenomenon of the shadow man. I get that it was supposed to be a twist. But it was just lame in my opinion.