Notable Cast: Chloe Levine, Will Peltz, Peter Vack, Grace
Van Dien, Clarissa Thibeaux, Draya Michele, Jonathan Schaech, Gillian White,
Steve Eifert, Bries Vannon
You know, Somnium has such a fascinating premise, and
it is one hell of a hook. An overnight "sleep sitter," Gemma, played
by Chloe Levine, works for a clinic that uses sleep suggestions on rich folks
to change their habits and ideologies, and she struggles to adapt to her new
life in LA. She made the trek from her small town in Georgia to be an actress
all by herself, and now, as she desperately tries to get auditions with no real
understanding of how the system works, she randomly stumbles into this job at Somnium
that analyzes, reprograms, and writes dreams and feelings into people. Even on
a baseline plot level, well, shit, I’m intrigued. It’s blending 1980s
dream-science-fiction cinema with a more modern, slow-burning personal horror.
Yes, please, go ahead and put my name on the list for that.
Even more fascinating is how Somnium is treating its
core ideas around ‘dreams.’ There's this interesting idea that the big city can
feel dreamlike to someone from a small community (a feeling I know all too
well, growing up in a farm community in South Dakota) and that everything can
feel like both a threat and an opportunity. For Gemma, played with such a
passionate, wide-eyed balance of confusion and fake confidence by Chloe Levine,
it is the dream. The big city, the possibility of success, and leaving behind a
life that felt like it was suffocating, particularly after a rather hard
breakup with her hometown boyfriend, Hunter. Chasing the dream in a place that
feels like a dream while working in a dream clinic.
Director and writer Racheal Cain has the hook down, too. The
film opens with a kind of humanoid creature in the void, a tease of the horrors
that Gemma will uncover due to lack of sleep, loneliness, and disappointment at
how hard it will be to chase her dream, and the film really loves bleeding that
dreamlike quality into its execution. It's pulsating and synthetic score. The
oddly empty streets and faceless people that Gemma has to weave around in the
city. It’s a gorgeously shot film that loves to use the shadows of the night
and the foreign tones of a large city, and it lets a lot of David Lynch style
anxieties creep into how its characters interact and into how some of its
dialogue is left unfinished or unstarted. Cain has a visual style and
atmosphere that she is absolutely folding into the narrative, which allows the
audience to feel what Gemma is feeling rather than necessarily explaining it.
It’s a balancing act that only succumbs to a fully nightmarish descent in the
third act and still manages to feel grounded, even when its characters,
setting, and tone do not.
While the horror elements don’t really settle in until the
third act, at least when it comes to its pale, ghostly figure that starts to
haunt Gemma, or what is happening behind the scenes of her new job at the dream
clinic, there is just always this great sense of dread. Her interactions with
the people around her, a stranger who offers to help but vaguely feels like he
preys on those in need, another young actress who hasn’t booked work in 15
years and looks on the brink of mental exhaustion, or her intense co-workers
who care too little - or perhaps a bit too much - about the work, all feed into
this sense that things around Gemma are out of reach of her reality. As the
film flashes back to her life in Georgia, particularly around the demise of her
relationship with her boyfriend, there’s a sense that perhaps home didn’t feel
all that real either. The horror of the film, centered on the science-fiction
concept of the dream clinic where she works, lingers, even if Somnium
doesn’t fully commit to it until the third act.
And to be fair, the third act is where the film might lose
some viewers. For all its balancing, it fully commits to its initial premise
and leans hard into the questionable tactics of the clinic and its people,
careening straight into full surrealism as Gemma must either run or defeat this
creature that becomes more real as the film continues. Visually, there’s a
great sense of darkness as the film uses a black void to represent a dream-like
state of being lost, and the effects on the creature are fantastic without
leaning too far into the unrealistic. Yet, the themes around Gemma’s journey as
a person, her new life, and her choices end up being all tied together very
neatly by the time the credits start. Too neatly. It’s as if through all of the
great choices that are being made in the film, by the direction, the cast, the
designs, and the writing, suddenly pull back at the last second from finding
that truly provocative elevation. Somnium punches hard, in its own way,
so it feels a tad disappointing to see it pull that punch right at the
end.
Still, it’s hard not to recommend Somnium to horror
fans if they are willing to engage with its layered view of dreams and
perception, as so much of the film is impressively crafted. In particular,
Chloe Levine is delivering a star performance here, and Racheal Cain is
certainly a highly skilled young filmmaker to keep an eye on. For a feature
film debut, Somnium is one hell of a way to kick it off, and it exudes
so much confidence in style, tone, and design that I’m a little shocked someone
like Blumhouse or Atomic Monster (or both now) hasn’t swooped in to grab her
for a new project. Until that time, though, Somnium is a great way to
support, and it does get a hearty recommendation.
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