'Dream Scenario' Review: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Nicolas Cage
A darkly comedic gem that gives the actor his best role in years.
Waiting for Nicolas Cage to freak out in a movie is like waiting for a beat to drop at an EDM concert. You know it’s coming, you’re primed, and when it finally arrives, it is nothing short of euphoric. In Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario, however, the moment takes its time, a choice that is emblematic of the film’s consistently clever use of its star.
Cage plays Paul Matthews, a middle-aged evolutionary biology professor whose classrooms are sparsely populated and who can’t seem to start writing the book on ant colonies he’s been thinking about for more than two decades. At home, he’s a bland family man with indifferent teenage daughters and a wife who is resigned to taking the lead in all aspects of their private life. Then Paul starts appearing in people’s dreams. Strangers recognize him in the street, former friends and lovers contact him out of the blue, and eventually, it becomes apparent that a sizable portion of the population has been affected. The thing about these dreams is that Paul doesn’t do much in them. He doesn’t start conversations or save anyone from burning buildings or chase them down corridors. He is just there, walking through the background, pleasantly and ambivalently surveying his surroundings.
The phenomenon launches him to minor celebrity status. His classroom becomes abuzz with excited new students taking selfies, and a PR agency headed by Michael Cera in a baseball cap swoops in to take a cut. Even his daughters start to think he’s cool. But things take a turn when the dream version of Paul finally starts to do something. Overnight, he goes from passive bystander to terrifying perpetrator, becoming the principal character in a pandemic of nightmares. Should he apologize? Take a public stance against cancel culture? Go into hiding? What happens when a person is the literal face of unspeakable acts that they had nothing to do with?
Dream Scenario is at its most compelling when it alights on these questions rather than, say, how the phenomenon is scientifically possible or the fickleness of fame or anything whatsoever to do with the Matthews’ marriage. At times, Borgli veers a little too close to clichéd satire, the same downfall that befell Scandi director Ruben Östlund with his 2022 hit Triangle of Sadness. But it’s Cage’s performance that muddies the water to just the right degree. There has always been something perverse about his acting. Early in his career, he expressed a desire to act like Picasso paints, and he’s pretty much lived up to it. In dozens of trashy genre mashups and a handful of unexpected gems, he’s managed to portray groovy tornadoes of evil, weirdos pushed to the brink of ecstatic madness, and doofuses who might kill you for no reason. His movie choices are eclectic. His fans are rabid. And every once in a while, everything aligns. In this movie, it does. A surreal scenario for a surreal actor leads to a surprisingly harmonious, even restrained result.
In one sense, Paul is the picture of blandness. Balding, with studious glasses and a layer of academic facial hair, he’s so passive that his midlife crisis has to be projected onto him by millions of people until it becomes real. But in another sense, he is the picture of menace. Historically, anonymous balding men in big coats have been the textbook stereotype of creeps, rapists, and perverts, and Cage’s inherent volatility colors in the spaces between the lines. Unlike Paul Giamatti, an actor who exudes humanity and vulnerability even when he’s playing curmudgeonly middle-aged men, Cage is always harboring a streak of unpredictability that could lash out at any moment. We know that Paul Matthews hasn’t actually done anything in the real world to inspire the horrifying acts that the dream version of Paul is perpetrating, but there is something about Cage that makes you mistrust his character. Like the people who dream about him, you wonder, just a little, what he might be capable of.
Dream Scenario was produced by Ari Aster, one of the most hyped young horror directors of the decade whose warped, unhinged films Hereditary and Midsommar have produced more than their fair share of nightmares. Dream Scenario is not strictly a horror movie by any means, but it treads a line between Aster’s surrealist horror and Östlund’s cheeky social satire. It’s strange, chilling, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, and Cage gives one of his best performances, modulating his acting style instead of toning it down or letting it run wild. For this reason alone, it’s worth the price of admission, even if the ending doesn’t quite stick the landing.