2020 | Canada | Directed by Anthony Scott Burns
Logline: A teenage runaway, suffering from night terrors, takes part in a clinical sleep study, only to find her psychological condition deteriorate, and her waking reality become increasingly fragile.
Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) is a very troubled young woman. She is loathe to stay at home, having had fallen out with her mother, possibly involving abuse of some kind. She spends her nights either quietly crashing on her best friend’s bedroom floor, or, more regularly, on the lonely park slide, under the curious moonlight. At high school she suffers terribly, falling asleep in class, prodded by teasing classmates. It doesn’t help that fragments of her bad dreams riddle her daytime.
She spots the chance to participate in an experimental sleep study taking place in a nearby clinic. This appeals to Sarah, killing two birds with one stone, a chance to sleep in a warm, safe bed, and perhaps get to the root of her oneiric affliction. The clinicians don’t quite reveal what their study is for, but Jeremy (Landon Liboiron), who is supervising the work, under the direction of Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington), finds Sarah and her nightmares more than a little interesting.
We’ve all wondered about the possibility of seeing our dreams in our waking state, the concept of being able to visually record what our dreams are, not just seismic graphs indicating our REM patterns. Well, director Burns, along with his co-screenwriter, Daniel Weisenburger, do just that, biting off an enormously ambitious chunk of Jungian pie, as they tackle the power of dreams and the fragility of the conscious and unconscious mind.
Come True is a rare creature (beast?) in the world of mainstream genre flicks, a science fiction-horror hybrid that doesn’t suffer fools gladly, providing a seemingly linear narrative that soon fractures and branches off into multiple avenues of interpretation. If David Cronenberg made a teenage romance, it might be like this. Actually, no, because that does a disservice to Cronenberg who would never make a teenage romance. It’s also part of the problem Come True has; a romantic sub-plot that threatens to capsize the far more interesting elements of Sarah and her wayward psyche, but, thankfully, not enough to scuttle it.
The sex side of her life is an important element though, not that it weighs heavily, but it becomes increasingly relevant. There is indication that Sarah’s emotional and psychological issues stem from something that could be sexual abuse. It is not made explicit, in terms of sub-plot, but it is hinted at. Her initial resistance Jeremy’s interest in her, more than just a patient, will eventually become the final hurdle to understanding her Persona, Animus, Anima, Shadow, and Self. These are Carl Jung’s widely recognised theories of the relationship between your unconscious mind and the conscious world around you.
While the movie uses these Jungian specifics as chapter titles through the movie, it refuses to let them dictate how the audience should interpret, understand, or even accept, the narrative that is unfolding. It’s as if the movie’s narrative thread is as susceptible to inner and outer influence as the human mind is to memory and desire. Sarah is a pawn to and warrior for her own strengths and weaknesses.
Despite a very modest budget (and, apparently, a tiny crew) the movie is stunningly shot - with an emphasis on cool blue hues - by director Burns, who also collaborates as a composer (under the alias Pilotpriest) with fellow electronic musician Electric Youth, delivering a terrifically moody, synth-washed score, reminding a little of Disasterpeace’s atmospheric work on It Follows. Burns is also responsible for the elaborate nightmare design and visual effects work, also very impressive.
Come True is definitely not for all tastes. Those wanting easy answers, rounded corners, and full-stop endings will find the movie obscure, frustrating, and pretentious. Those who appreciate ambiguity and symbolism, who crave the richness of dream logic when applied to cinema narrative, combined with powerful performance - Julia Sarah Stone is quite remarkable in the central role - will find Come True as a kind of elixir.
An elixir, though tainted, no less nightmare velvet and exotic in flavour than in the movie’s final ten minutes, when expectations are torn asunder, and inner cosmic dread comes true.