Come True: Unforgettable nightmare imagery in this 'dream-logic' twist on Elm Street
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
Dreams are a natural backdrop for horror flicks, as the durability of the Nightmare on Elm Street series demonstrates. The Canadian mind-bender Come True clearly has Elm Street DNA, though it aims to paint a more artistic picture.
Anthony Scott Burns’ film (exec produced by Canadian horror-meister Vincenzo Natali of Cube and Splice fame) operates in three worlds – reality, what we think is reality (with blurred lines between them), and all-out Hieronymus Bosch-style hellishness.
Julia Sarah Stone is a troubled teen literally haunted by her dreams in Come True.
The first two are a narrative juggling act that is sometimes confounding. But the last is the real reason to watch Come True. On whatever passes for a budget in a Canadian indie horror film, Burns creates a strikingly infernal dream world, complete with floating corpses, doors to nowhere, and an unfriendly central entity called The Persona.
The nightmare imagery has a note of familiarity to anybody who’s ever woken up with clear memories of Hell hard on their heels.
These are the images that leave 18-year-old Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) in an agitated and sleepless state, prone to falling asleep in class.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
In desperation, she turns to a sleep clinic (as a paid volunteer, no less), where her dreams are visually monitored using experimental technology, and where we find, disturbingly, that other volunteers are having the exact same nightmares.
You don’t have to have seen a lot of horror films to know that when you open the door to a place, things tend to pass through.
The clinic offers up a “villain” of sorts, the mad scientist-ish Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington) who is single-minded about his experiments, especially when the dream apparitions start looking back. It also produces an ally, a young researcher named Riff (Landon Liboiron), whose interest in Sarah is part compassionate and part frankly inappropriate infatuation with a high school girl.
Plot points are moot, however, since even the most realistic moments can be snapped away by frightened, opened eyes and a head snapping up from a pillow.
Fool me once, shame on me, etc. But after a while, this don’t-trust-reality approach can be suspense-fatiguing. Sorting out what’s true and what’s not becomes so convoluted that the abrupt ending seems a case of either running out of money or ideas.
Still, Come True is a movie that you’ll likely remember for the images it burns in the brain, more than for its story.
Come True. Written and directed by Anthony Scott Burns. Starring Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron and Christopher Heatherington. Releases across Canada Friday, March 12, on iTunes, Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus, Vimeo on Demand and Cineplex Store.