The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Dreams are the thought processes that occur when we sleep. Meaning has frequently been attributed to dreams ranging from ancient cultures who believed that dreams held auguries and omens to the language of symbolism attributed to them by Sigmund Freud.
In genre cinema, dreams are frequently seen as having precognitive power and able to predict events before they occur. The Surrealist movement is frequently fascinated with dreams and makes their play of symbolism literal. Some other films involve people entering into dreams or daydreams for fantastical adventures.
Dream themes found enormous popularity in the horror movie with A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and its villain Freddy Krueger, a boogeyman who kills people in their dreams. A host of sequels and copycat films about dream-invading killers followed for several years after.
Popular in the silent era was the All a Dream Ending where the story pulled back at the end to reveal that everything that transpired was a dream. The horror film also makes frequent use of the dream jump where something disturbing is pulled back from to then reveal it is a character only dreaming. Both are now clichés from overuse.
There is also the dreamscape film about people who have the ability to venture into the dreams of others or else the use of devices that allow them to do so. Also of note in the late 2010s have been a number of films dealing with the horrors of sleep paralysis.
Oddly eccentric Swiss comedy about a man who starts to uncontrollably shed sand. Undeniably reminiscent of the superior The Science of Sleep but not without its quirky amusements
Just when you thought that this witless and unfunny series has died off, it drags itself out of mothballs for another outing. As with the other entries, it is a bunch of recent movies overrun with crude, moronic gags
A Michel Gondry film that blurs the line between dream and reality with hilariously offbeat regard. Gondry indulges his eccentricities to the maximum with quite sublime results
A light whimsical short story about a daydreamer is turned into a bloated and ponderous vehicle for the musical and comedy set-pieces of the perpetually wet-eared Danny Kaye
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
The first film from Oliver Stone and a head-scratching puzzle as a writer is haunted by various supernatural figures from out of his imagination
One of Wes Craven’s best films. Loosely based on true-life book by botanist Wade Davis who set out to find the drug that creates zombies, Craven delves into Haitian voodoo in a striking blend of dream and horror
Directed by the underrated J.S. Cardone, this features Scott Glenn in a fine performance trying to track Indian sorcerer Benjamin Bratt
I went to see this on the description that called it a horror film about premonitions of disaster but far less interestingly it is a fictional attempt to analyse people’s attempts to grieve over the Fukushima Disaster – not uninteresting but with little interest in being a fantastic film
From cult director Abel Ferrara, a film described as being being about the language of dreams in which Willem Dafoe drifts through a series of surreal landscapes searching for the meaning of life
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
Disastrous Hollywood version of Dennis Potter’s classic tv mini-series where a hospitalised Robert Downey jr fantasises a dream world of 1940s film noir
Clearly influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street, this is a film about an executed killer who returns as a dream boogeyman who transforms from a flow of sand
Another of the recent films on the topic of sleep paralysis that one watches with the hope that it might do some justice to the topic
The Slumber Party Massacre was an mundane and unmemorable slasher entry; this is a nonsensical sequel that tries to turn it into a copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Contains some of the bizarrely ridiculous scenes to ever take part in any slasher film of the era
Live-action adaptation of the one of the great early comic-strips Little Nemo in Slumberland, a work that was ground-breaking for its experimental innovation
The Stand is regarded as Stephen King’s best novel, an epic that depicts the final showdown between good and evil in the aftermath of civilisation. The mini-series adaptation was alas placed into the ham fists of one of King’s worst adapters. Mick Garris
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
Enormously underrated directorial effort from screenwriter David Koepp in which Kevin Bacon gains the ability to see the dead. A film filled with some genuinely spooky moments
Bizarrely uncategorisable film from Zack Snyder that seems a mix of Girl, Interrupted and Inception
Czech Claymation animator Jan Svankmajer embraces the Terry Gilliam cutout animation process in this wackily playful mix of dream and surrealism that emerges similar to The Science of Sleep
Very difficult to find, this is film that has existed in legend – an erotic film with Vanity as a model on a desert island who becomes involved with an ape. Beautifully filmed and Vanity (who spends much of the show nude) is jaw-dropping
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment
Standout horror anthology designed to highlight episodes from three Asian directors – Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook and Japan’s Takashi Miike – all of whom are on top form
South Korean film that borrows the premise of the film Frequency in having two characters separated across twenty years have clairvoyant dreams of the other’s life and combining forces to stop a killer
Acclaimed Lithuanian film involving a venture into a person’s dreamscape a la The Cell and Inception. Some nicely cool visuals, a strong character arc and some potentially edgy sexual content but the film still remains in the shadow of Inception without quite finding enough original ideas
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
A unique and very original animated film from Richard Linklater where a character wanders through a dream, encountering various people and their different philosophical outlooks
Seventh of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films where Wes Craven returns to direct the most remarkable of all the sequels, an extraordinary meta-fiction that takes place in the real world
Zany Czech film where a scientist invents a device that can cause dream to manifest only to cause the sexy comic-book heroine her husband is dreaming about to appear
Anime involving a superheroic battle for the fate of the world. Dazzling eye candy but too many characters and subplots make things confusing
Makoto Shinkai anime that starts as a light and fluffy piece about a boy and a girl who keep waking up in each other’s bodies but expands out into a wholly different story, gaining unexpected emotional depths