Come True

Canadian movie, it opens with visions of blurred, shadowy male figures with glowing eyes. We sense it is a dream then we see a teenage girl waking up in a sleeping bag on the bottom part of a slide in a town park. Then later by chance she sees an ad on a bulletin board for volunteers for a sleep study. She hasn't been sleeping well, has recurring nightmares, and frequently falls asleep in class. So she snaps at the chance, also because it will pay her.

So the movie goes on and I found it very interesting. There is a 30-odd year old movie called "Jacob's Ladder" and of that movie I wrote "everything in the film depicts dreams, hallucinations, and memories during those few minutes before death, as he is fighting for his life." That was my interpretation and there are things in this movie that remind me of that.

The big reveal, the "twist", comes at the very end of the movie with a message on her cell phone. Intellectually I know what happened during the movie but I can't put it all together in a coherent summary. I don't fully grasp what the filmmaker was depicting. There are certain symbols, like the two times 7:11 and 10:01 which apparently mean something to those who study spiritualism but escape me.

Am I glad I spent the time watching it? Yes, I am, even though I can't fully explain what the movie is saying. Would I watch it again? Probably not. The main actress is interesting, she plays an 18-yr-old (needed for the sex scene) and was probably 20 during filming, but with her short blond hair and youthful features looked almost like my 12-yr-old blond headed grandson. I don't say that in any negative way, I found her to be very appropriate for the role and her acting was very effective.

On DVD from my public library, my wife skipped, not her kind of movie.

Come True is worth a watch. I wasn't completely satisfied with the ending but that's just my opinion. The story itself is engaging to watch. The atmospheric soundtrack brings a mysterious ambiance that keeps you focussed on the story. The sound was the best part of this movie. The acting wasn't bad even though not everybody were perfect. It's not really a movie I would recommend but it's good enough if you have nothing else to do and like mysteries with a pinch of sci-fi.

Best dream sequences I've ever seen in video. Some bits along the way hint at the ending, but very discretely.

Slow moving, but definitely worth the time.

So the entire film is about this girl who almost ran away from home who enlists in a sleep study. They monitor her brainwaves on trippy CRT monitors from the 90s and transform them into images to see what she is dreaming about. More or less everything makes sense until the very end, when the spell is broken and you realize that it is all a pretentious movie with "a message" that you care nothing about at all. I don't want to spoil it, because many people seem to have enjoyed the dream mysticism and symbolism of which the film is full of. Myself, I was intrigued by the obvious plot and was severely disappointed by the ending.

All in all the acting is decent, the pacing is slow, but consistent and the dream sequences, even if they look like something made in a few days on a 3D designer, are pretty cool. What I disliked profoundly is the bait and switch at the end.

If you want to enjoy it, take it as a personal project of the writers to express something personal, like Phantasm was, and give it a try. Just know in advance that nothing truly scary or active will happen and that the film is slowly, very slowly, getting to its point by avoiding it most of the film.

This movie has several things going for it, but ultimately disappoints. The central idea is a good one, and the lead actor gives a strong performance. She's likely to become more well known soon. The cinematography is strong, and the score is good, as is the direction, which owes quite a bit to Kubrick. Where the movie fails is in the writing, and to a lesser extent in the performances of the supporting cast. The dialogue is sometimes trite, and the plot is thin with holes. The end is both predictable and yet somehow even more disappointing than one expects. I don't mean to be harsh; the movie is worth a look. Just be prepared to be let down a bit by it all, in the end.