By SHAWN MACOMBER
Starring Mallory Drumm, Alex Lee Williams and David Richard
Written and directed by Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm and Alex Lee Williams
The Horror Section
A quarter-century-plus into the found-footage gold rush—note to self: develop found-footage screenplay from the POV of gold-sifting pan—it can often be difficult not only to remember how fresh and affecting some of those early landmark films and franchises were, but also how few of the tropes of today’s vérité horrors can be traced back to the best moments of those OG efforts. “Uninspired” and “rote” are words that often come to mind: Leave the creativity gun, take the low-budget cannoli.
Which is why DREAM EATER (coming to theaters October 24) is such a refreshing, satisfying viewing experience. By almost perfectly melding the aesthetics and flows of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY along with a heavy dose of Jungian “shadow self” personification and cult intrigue, it offers an unsettling, hyperrealistic reminder of how powerfully the lately sagging subgenre can be revivified when approached with intelligence and malice. Also, a dedication to found footage as a medium to adventurously explore rather than a narrative and/or budget-slimming means to an end. (It’s probably worth noting that DREAM EATER was an early acquisition by Eli Roth for his new The Horror Section distribution label.)
Here’s the setup: Documentarian Mallory (Mallory Drumm) and her semi-unemployed boyfriend Alex (Alex Lee Williams) are prepping to take a vacation to a rural getaway for Alex’s birthday. Alex describes the snowbound rental as “our very own Overlook,” which seems a bit foreboding, but not nearly as much as the fact that he’s been having violent parasomnia events in which he seems to lose his identity and control of his actions. What, precisely, is “parasomnia”? The Canadian Medical Association Journal offers the following definition: “Sleepwalking, sleep terrors, sleeptalking and sleep paralysis are some of the behavioral manifestations associated with the partial arousals from sleep known as parasomnias–a group of sleep disorders defined as undesirable physical events or experiences that occur during the initiation of sleep, during sleep or during arousal from sleep.”
Anyway, the couple decide not to cancel their self-isolating trip–even after a telehealth doctor puts the potential downside into the starkest terms. “Alex, are you aware that people with your disorder have killed their bed partners?” she asks. “Is that a risk you’re willing to take?” Yep! Further, Mallory, to Alex’s chagrin, is determined to film the outbursts. Content, it seems, really is king.
It should be no spoiler to note that the parasomnia gets progressively more intense, causing fractures in a relationship that was clearly already strained over money, ambition and diverging life trajectories. Each episode leads the couple further down a dark path, and Mallory slowly begins to realize she is documenting more than a mere medical or psychological condition. She is facing something supernatural–something sinister that was planted in Alex virtually at birth and only now is coming into grotesque bloom. (A plot point gleaned from an on-line UNSOLVED MYSTERIES knockoff called UNRESOLVED MYSTERIES is a fun little nudge-nudge, wink-wink bit of shade thrown at our true-crime-obsessed digital culture.) Not only might Mallory never get her doc into Sundance; she might not live to get herself into another day.
One of the great things about DREAM EATER being told from the POV of a seasoned documentarian is that it looks amazing for a found-footage film. The framing, the pacing, the lighting are all on point, which, perhaps paradoxically, makes it easier to suspend disbelief than the subgenre’s usual shake-rattle-and-roll approach. Writer/directors Jay Drakulic, Drumm and Williams then juxtapose this steadiness against the chaos of the parasomnia, which leaves viewers feeling as if they were just jostled out of sleep to face some nuttiness or evil without their full wits about them. It is very, very effective. The story, too, is well-constructed, a slow burn that guides us inexorably toward a weirder, more surrealistic end, while peeling the layers back in such a way that you never get any deus ex machina vibes. We are more like frogs being boiled slowly in that Jungian water–by the time we realize how deeply steeped into the beyond we are, it is already the new normal.
May we find much more found footage of this caliber.
