COME TRUE (2021) Review
Horror movies have been playing with nightmares since the earliest days of the motion picture, with filmmaking pioneer Georges Méliès first peeking into that curiosity door back in 1896 with the 1-minute short A Nightmare, wherein a sleeping man indeed has the very first on-screen representation of a night terror. It would be nearly 90 years later that Wes Craven would burst that door wide open with A Nightmare on Elm Street, a whole new kind of slasher film that made audiences afraid of their own beds the way Jaws had previously made them afraid of stepping foot into the water. Craven’s Freddy Krueger was an evil presence who had the power to kill you in real life through your nightmares, and writer/director Anthony Scott Burns is playing with some similar ideas in his new movie Come True.
Playing out like an arthouse take on A Nightmare on Elm Street, Come True centers on Sarah Dunne (Julia Sarah Stone), a teenager who seems to be sleepwalking through life. Plagued by nightmares of a mysterious figure, Sarah takes part in a sleep study that, according to the film’s official plot synopsis, “becomes a nightmarish descent into the depths of her mind and a frightening examination of the power of dreams.” Sarah soon realizes that others are seeing the same figure, and it’s beginning to haunt her waking life.
The most striking aspect of Come True is its many nightmare sequences, one of which ushers us into the story at the very start of the film. A slow, dreadful trip into the nightmare realm gives us our first look at the shadow figure at the center of things, an entity that always appears at the end of long corridors and behind closed doors in Sarah’s darkest dreams. Various sequences of this sort, feeling like virtual “dark rides,” serve as the primary horror elements in the genre-bending Come True, and they’re loaded with incredible nightmare imagery and disturbing landscapes decorated with perversions of the human body. Brought to the screen in black & white and abiding only by nightmare logic, these sequences have a haunting power to them, with Burns and his “dream team” of artists managing to capture the unsettling, intangible nature of nightmares in a way that few movies ever truly have.
But it’s not all horror in Come True, as the film’s approach to dream exploration is also firmly rooted in the world of science fiction. Burns explores the subconscious mind like he’s taking a trip to the farthest reaches of outer space, outfitting his leading lady in what looks like a futuristic space suit for the scenes in the sleep facility and charting the various steps involved in our nightly sleep cycles the way other sci-fi movies would track a spaceship touching down on an alien planet. It’s in these moments of subconscious exploration where Come True is at its most compelling, the film bringing the dreams of its characters to life in ways that are sometimes terrifying, sometimes beautiful, and always awe-inspiring.
In one of the film’s standout scenes, Sarah is able to literally view the dream of a friend while he’s having it, with a tune from the synth-pop band Electric Youth playing over top of a rough visual depiction of the man’s dream as Sarah watches along. It’s a beautiful moment that brilliantly conveys the inner feelings of the characters, providing a brief respite from what is otherwise a chilling movie about the nightmare figure plaguing them both. Burns, in only his second feature film, weaves through the various different genres at play with confidence, displaying a firm control over his vision and desired aesthetic every step along the way. There’s nary a choice made in the movie that doesn’t stay true to that vision, from the purple lighting in the sleep facility’s command center right down to an eye patch worn by Sarah during one stretch of the film that feels oddly iconic and unique to the film’s specific mood. It’s as if the whole movie is set in its own space and time entirely, a place that looks like our world but isn’t quite.
As Sarah, Julia Sarah Stone is more than up to the task of carrying the whole movie, bringing to the screen a character who can best be described by a line of dialogue that’s found within the script. Discussing the writing of Philip K. Dick, Landon Liboiron’s Jeremy notes that his words have a “haunting sadness” to them, and the line might as well be referring to Sarah herself in that moment. Sarah almost feels like a ghost walking through the world she technically inhabits, barely engaging with what’s going on around her; Stone brings that otherworldly ethereal quality in spades. She’s a fascinating character to spend a couple hours with, a sort of living, breathing dream within a dream, and by the end you’ll likely be sad to leave her behind.
Do our dreams mean anything? What about our nightmares? Can the things we encounter in that world somehow have an impact on our waking life? And what can we learn about ourselves during those mysterious hours between the time we lay our head down on the pillow and the time our alarm clock shatters the illusion? These are the questions Come True sets out to explore, and it does so in a way that’s altogether boldly original, hauntingly emotional, and genuinely bone-chilling when it wants to be. And it often wants to be, particularly in one terrifying sequence that preys upon the horrors of sleep paralysis, and another involving a multi-limbed… thing. Burns understands that the greatest mystery of the universe isn’t somewhere out in space but rather right between our ears, and it’s that clear fascination with the human brain that allows him to deliver a sci-fi/horror tale that you won’t have an easy time scrubbing from your own.
Mileage will vary when it comes time for Come True’s final act, however, which admittedly doesn’t quite stick its ambitious landing. The resolution of the storyline feels like something of a cop-out, almost as if it wasn’t the intended destination all along. But even still, those along for the ride will likely be left with a strong reason to rewind and revisit the movie in the wake of an ending that will surely polarize, hungry to find any breadcrumbs they might have missed the first way through. And even if the ending is indeed a tad bit jarring, it nevertheless brings a whole new layer to the movie that only serves to deepen the mystery and intrigue of its dreamlike logic. There’s a whole lot to unpack here, but those are spoilers for another day.
Loaded with haunting imagery guaranteed to get under your skin, powered by an incredible performance from Julia Sarah Stone, and punched up by a wonderful synth soundtrack from Electric Youth, Come True is damn near genre movie perfection, as well as one of the first truly great original sci-fi movies of the new decade. Burns, a composer and visual effects artist in addition to being a filmmaker, puts all of his various skills to the test with his second feature film, asserting himself as a fresh new artist with one hell of a promising career ahead. A true visionary, he may prove to be.
Come True is a film I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come. I’ll be thinking of its beauty as I inevitably daydream while listening to the soundtrack. And I’ll be thinking of its horror as I lay my head down on the pillow at night and drift off into that alien planet we call the human mind.
Try not to get too lost in there. It can be a scary place.
