Here’s a terrific late 2023 satirical comedy-drama with a dreamy high concept pitch. We have Nic Cage on fine form in Dream Scenario, portraying a neurotic man enjoying (and then not) his 15-minutes of fame.

Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli helmed this project, which has been critically acclaimed and is no doubt set for cult classic status. We enjoyed it big time!

How Not to Handle Fame in Dream Scenario

Dream Scenario is certainly an unusual film. We’d say it’s a mixture of Groundhog Day (1990) meets the also excellent Nic Cage romp Adaptation (2002).

The story is about Paul Matthews (Cage) who’s a homely evolutionary biology professor at a college in middle class America. He lives with his wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and their two daughters.

He’s a well-meaning bloke, but neurotic and frustrated his peers are publishing books and getting recognition. Meanwhile, he has none of that and is generally reviewed as unremarkable.

However, his dreams of some form of attention and fame are realised when he starts appearing in people’s dreams.

Matthews doesn’t do anything in them, other than appear at an eerie moment as a kind of uninvolved observer. The dreams are often violent and unpleasant, with Matthews watching on impassive, disinterested.

Initially, the dreams trigger off a lot local and national interest. Matthews is interviewed on the news, his class take a keener interest in his seminars, and he’s getting bags of attention.

This includes interest from a PR firm called Thoughts? headed by CEO Trent (Michael Cera of Arrested Development fame). This triggers hopes for Matthews he can get a book published, believing this will get him the recognition he craves in his field.

In our day job we work in this industry (sort of—digital marketing) and the whole Thoughts? bit is so on the money it made us squirm.

The only way it could have been better realised is if the PR agency was called Ideate.

For Matthews, things go from enjoyable to bad fairly quickly. The dreams he’s involved in become very violent and he starts murdering people in horrible fashion, which the likes of his students can’t psychologically separate him from.

There’s a brilliant scene where a cognitive behavioural therapist attempts to teach his students Matthews isn’t out to kill them all. But the dreams are so distressing they can barely stand the sight of him.

Matthews finds he must try to restore some order to his life, but everything gets so far out of control people can’t see beyond his dream-based crimes. He’s ostracised from his community and becomes a hate figure.

That makes Dream Scenario open to all manner of interpretation.

Some people think it’s a take on “cancel culture”, such as with Cate Blanchett in the 2022 psychological drama Tár. We think that’s a surface level consideration. For us, it’s a film about a man deeply unprepared and unsuitable for fame craving it anyway.

Matthews considers himself unrecognised in his field and unhappy he’s also seen as inconspicuous. That’s rather than realise he has a loving wife, good career, beautiful home etc. And he’s willing to put it all on the line for an ego boost. A lack of self-perception and desire push him to seek recognition for a situation out of his control.

He is, in other words, lacking gratitude.

Cage leads all of this in magnificent fashion. It annoys us when we see people online claim he’s a bad actor. They’ve just not watched the various films he’s brilliant in, such as this and recent efforts like the understated indie film Pig (2021).

We hope Cage keeps leaning into this indie film direction as it suits him more over generic blockbusters. In Dream Scenario he turns the film into a tragicomedy masterclass, with bouts of humour, neurosis, and pathos.

Matthews is, at times, a deeply pathetic individual and is humiliated on several occasions. You feel for him, yet he’s also dug this hole entirely for himself.

Watching Cage manage it all with his talents is very enjoyable.

We must also note the film’s ending. We’ve seen quite a few notable critics claim they hate it, but we didn’t have any major issue with it. SPOILER! There’s a technological revolution and some new hardware that allows people to enter other’s dreams, which is promptly used by marketing firms to advertise whilst you sleep (an idea also seen in cult classic animation Futurama).

Overall, verging on 5/5 from us here. After watching Dream Scenario, we immediately wanted to watch it all again—the hallmark of an excellent film.

The Production of Dream Scenario

The film wasn’t a rousing success at the box office, taking home $12.4 million. However, its continued positive press and word of mouth have added to its critical acclaim, including nominations at the Golden Globes.

Although the plot is set in the US, the shoot took place in a leafy region of Toronto, Canada, in autumn of 2022.

Cage has called this his best film and considered retiring from acting after the critical acclaim he received from this and Pig. He’s 61 and felt it capped off his career in fine style. Happily, he’s continued on in more productions since (including Longlegs from 2024 which was highly acclaimed—we’ll review that soon enough).

He comes across as a bit of a workaholic (Dream Scenario was his 100th ever film), so it wouldn’t surprise us to see him still acting in 2045.

Director Kristoffer Borgli hadn’t directly though of the actor for the lead role. He said this in a 2023 interview.

“I had written the character with no one in mind. On paper, this guy is unremarkable. He doesn’t stand out, he’s very bland, and he’s socially awkward and sort of a beta male. Here we are casting one of the most recognisable people on the planet and someone who has a lot of natural charisma and energy. The idea of him in this role has this meta layer to it because there’s so much overlap with how the culture has treated him as a mythical icon and what happens with Paul Matthews. But I needed to shave off Nicolas Cage, so that’s why he’s bald in the movie. That’s why he’s distinctly dressed as a suburban dad. It’s also why we made a prosthetic nose, which might be hard to detect, but he has a slightly different nose. All of these details create the sort of uncanny feeling of watching a person that you’ve never seen before.”

Borgli also wrote the screenplay (full credit to him, as it’s a great script) with inspiration from Carl Jung’s works on synchronicity and the unconscious mind.

On a final note, the film makes an odd (and this is an unusual film by the way) to the Johnathan Demme music concert Stop Making Sense (1984). Cage’s wife in the film has a fantasy of the Talking Heads star David Byrne wearing his iconic oversized ’80s suit.

The film ends with Cage wearing a take on that massive suit in a dream scenario.

Intriguing, eh? Yes. We’ve seen quite a few reviewers say this is one very strange film, but we embraced it for what it is and didn’t think much of that. If it can channel a bit of Talking Heads along the way, extra kudos.