My Thoughts on Dream Eater
Dream Eater is a found footage horror movie with a very simple setup, where a filmmaker records her boyfriend’s violent sleep episodes during their stay in a remote cabin.
It's messy, strange and occasionally frustrating, but it has a sort of charm to its rough edges that keeps you watching, even when the movie wandered away from what I thought it was trying to do.
Since the movie is framed as found footage, I expected the usual sense of immediacy that comes from characters filming things as they happen, and yes, the movie gives you shaky shots, handheld panic, and the sense that someone is just trying to capture what’s right in front of them.
But the film also steps away from the style in a way I wasn’t really totally sold on, because out of nowhere, you get these polished shots of forests and lakes, almost like the movie suddenly wants to pretend it’s a nature documentary.
But I can see and understand what the filmmakers were reaching for - this idea that the world around the characters is calm and indifferent while their relationship slowly falls apart - I just found the contrast more distracting than poetic.
Dream Eater also carries a lot of mythology, and at first it works fine when the horror dips into strange lore that isn’t immediately explained, but unfortunately, it doesn’t stay mysterious for long when characters stop what they’re doing to spell out the rules, the legends, and every theory they can come up with.
The movie insisted a bit too much on breaking things down through long conversations that drag the pace, when it should have trusted its own atmosphere a little more.
But when the scares do show up, they show up quite loudly, where the erratic camera movements, the dim lighting, and the sudden shifts in Alex’s behavior, all come together in a creepy and bold way for such a small movie.
And while the buildup can feel uneven, the final stretch is fun, where for the last twenty minutes or so, it finally feels like the story knows what it wants to be, and it becomes chaotic and frantic in a way that suits the style, and though you will see certain moments coming, the payoff was worth the wait.
The film wouldn’t work nearly as well without the performances though, especially from Alex Lee Williams, and he plays Alex with this energy that makes you feel uneasy in the best possible way. where one minute he’s cracking lame jokes, the next he’s staring into the camera like he doesn’t recognize himself.
Mallory Drumm, who plays Mallory, has a quieter impact but an important one, as her reactions help ground the movie, and while she doesn’t get as many standout scenes, the film gives her the space to matter.
Dream Eater is a movie that far from perfect, as it does rely on familiar horror ideas and is a bit predictable, but it still manages to feel personal and oddly sincere.
It also does manage to find some moments of originality at times, and I never really felt bored, and that counts for something, as it makes good use of its 90 minutes and offers a strange, unsettling little trip into the woods that I’m glad I took as a fan of found footage.