Rêve mortel

A promising premise, but not all that successful in gelling everything together hampered this twisted, grim little unknown psychological thriller. It's strange and disjointed as the narrative moves back and forth where our main Alex is plagued by visions of his past where as a child he witnessed his mother and father brutally gunned down by a hunter wearing a skinned wolf mask. However what's screwing with his mind, is that he believes he's seeing the hunter for real despite that he's parent's killer shot himself soon after the murders. The plot is made-up of a collection of recurring flashes and bad nightmares, each one more jarring then the first. But these nightmares just seem too real. Is Alex just losing his sanity (as outside his nightmare he's seeing the masked killer) or is there something more devious going on. The slow-winding material is quite knotty, but simply too vague despite the predictably of the circumstances. It's all familiar; soapy dramatics tied amongst a shady web of paranoia and deceit with a twist upon a twist, although one of those revelations comes midway through it. The momentum can be quite bumpy (as some sequences can feel drawn out to only pad out what might have been better suited as a short film or a TV episode for such shows as "The Twilight Zone" or "Tales From the Crypt"), where the suspense only lasts in short bursts (due to the idea of dreams and reality blurring together) and from that the chills / shock tactics come to the forefront. There are solid bunch of performances; Mitchell Anderson is suitably fitting as the neurotic Alex. Juliette Cummins and Thom Babbes are acceptable as his worried girlfriend / and friend. Xander Berkeley keeps a bitter attitude as Alex's older brother. Director Kristine Peterson's sober handling didn't entirely do the production any favours, as while capable it just lacked the liveliness that was needed. "Deadly Dreams" is an interesting, but leadenly flawed low-budget oddity.

Young man who lost almost his entire family in a hunting trip several years ago by a serial killer is haunted by visions of the killer and then eventually reality and dreams cross over as he begins to see the killer in real life even though his brother assures him that there is no way that the killer is after him. Brief film with a wicked twist of an ending and a few chilling scenes, features lack luster direction and performances. This film could have been so much more given the premise.

Rated R; Nudity, Violence, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.

***SPOILERS*** The movie "Deadly Dreams" starts off with a Christmas Eve massacre of Mr. & Mrs. Torme, Geoffery Forward & Gyl Roland, with their terrified ten year-old son Alex, Timothy Austin, running for his life outside the cabin into the woods from the masked killer. The killer turns out to be Norman Perkins, Gary Ainsworth, a disgruntled business partner of Mr. Torme who later turned the gun on himself. Waking up in a cold sweat Alex, Mitchell Anderson, now ten years later still has nightmares about that horrible incident.

"Deadly Dreams" does hold together at first until you realize that after a while you, as well as Alex, can't tell whats a dream and whats reality! That take away a lot from the tension and suspense of the movie.

The wolf-masked killer is seen popping up all over the place with really no real explanation why he's there and why have him put on that ridicules mask! Since were told who he is in the first place? Later we meet Alex's older brother Jack, Xander Berkeley, who seems to be mad at him for not tending to the family business which his parents left him. You wonder why did they leave it to the much younger Alex, who was ten at the time of his parents death, and not his older brother Jack who seemed to be much more competent. On top of all that Alex didn't seem to care if Jack was in charge so why the conflict between the two brothers?

Alex is attending college and does some free lance writing on the side and, with the exception of his nightmares, seems happy with his lot in life. Danny, Tom Babbes, a collage friend of Alex gets him to meet pretty and at the same time mysterious Maggie Kallir, Juliette Cummins, on a dare who we later see is having an affair with Jack. Together their both trying to drive poor Alex insane in order to get his share of the inheritance that was left to him from his parents. There's an even more sinister force involved in the story that doesn't reveal itself until the very last minute or so of the movie.

"Deadly dreams" could have been a really great horror movie but it was so hooked up in it's many dream sequences that they just about wrecked the entire film. The plot holes, mostly due to the dream sequences, were as deep and as many as a mine field in the Western Sahara Desert during the Battle of Al Alamine. Watching the movie I wondered what a top horror film director of the 1980's like Fred Walton or Sam Raimi would have done with the same movie? The improvement in the movies story-line would have been quite noticeable and made more sense.

The material in the film "Deadly Dreams" was far better then most stories that were made into horror/suspense films back then and the movie should have been far better then it ended up being. If only all those confusing and annoying dream-sequences were cut out of it.

I remember the first time ever noticing Deadly Dreams. I was working in a Video Warehouse years ago and noticed the cover. Something about it caught my eye. It wasn't until years later that I would come to sit down and actually watch this movie.

Deadly Dreams plays off like an episode of Tales From the Crypt. It just runs 35 minutes too long. The storyline starts out with a family on Christmas Eve. Two parents and their son Alex wait for the oldest son to come to the house. When they receive a knock on the door, it isn't the oldest son but a man with a rifle who guns down the two parents. 10 years later Alex is 20 years old and often has horrible nightmares of the man who killed his parents murdering him. Alex and his brother both gained a hefty inheritance from the death of their Father and it looks like someone might be trying to get their hands on it.

For a movie that runs 79 minutes it certainly is very slow. We don't get anything new out of the storyline as Tales From the Crypt did have a story very similar to this one in one of the old comic books. At least the acting was decent in this film and the last ten minutes are interesting. Other then that, I was falling asleep at times.

This movie might be good for one viewing on a boring Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I would rather watch something else. 5/10

This movie is as its title says....Dreams....ugggghhhh....

The movie is so confusing at times you never know when the dreams are real or not. The movie generally revolves around a man who was in the house with his parents the night they were murdered by a hunter in (I'm guessing) a wolf's head mask.

The movie moves along at all the velocity of a golf cart, with no real twists or turns. There is the underlying story of the main characters both in love with the same woman, who's playing both sides in order to get ahead (can you say gold-digger?) I'll give it a 3 out of 10, because it does have some nice nude scenes, with a very cool ending despite its slow story. However if you are looking for a great horror film, look away at another one instead.