This one might be cheating the “horror” category a bit, but I remember watching it as a kid and it scaring me. Does it still…?
Alex Gardner is a promising young man with an innate ability to use psychic powers. Telekinesis and Extra Sensory Perception come easily to him. He used to be in a government program to help him develop these gifts, but he soon realized they were going to use them in ways he wasn’t ready to allow. Instead of using his gifts in a governmental project, Alex uses them for his own personal gain by betting on horse races he seems to already know the outcome of and seemingly seducing women to sleep with him and then tossing them aside. That is until he runs into a bookie that wants him, check that, demands to work with Alex.
Serendipitiously as Alex is being pressured to work with some seedy characters at the horse track he gets recruited into yet another, different, and more ethical government program. He is approached by his old mentor and handler(?) Dr. Novotny. Dr. Novotny wants Alex to use his gifts to help people who suffer from mental issues. Things ranging from psychotic episodes all the way down to erectile dysfunction. The idea is that Alex can go into a patient’s dreams and help assist them in getting over whatever issue they are facing. Given the choice of working for a small-time hood or working to help people in a government-funded program, Alex relents and begins to work with Dr. Novotny.
Alex begins his work with the program and immediately sees new potential in what he does. He helps a child overcome his nightmares and starts to see the real good in what his gifts can offer. Then he runs afoul of the previous “golden boy” who was the only other one to dive into dreams, another young man named Tommy. Alex not only doesn’t like the way Tommy acts, but he gets a feeling that he is more than what he seems. Worse than finding out Tommy’s history is what Alex finds when he searches WHY Tommy is in the program. This changes everything, for everyone, and could potentially change the world.
I remember watching this movie clearly too young to see a lot of it, but I was a “latch-key kid” so I saw many movies before I should. In my kid brain, this was a horror movie. There was death, there were monsters, and there were weird sequences of adults hugging in ways I wasn’t familiar with. Going back and watching it now it is clearly just a weird sci-fi movie about controlling dreams. Sure there is one monster in it, but it’s not scary so much as it is creepy and they telescope everything about to happen well before it does.
Dreamscape as a whole is a really good movie, honestly. The cast is out of control with talent. Actors like Dennis Quaid and Kate Capshaw as your leads. Then you have Max Von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, George Wendt, hell even Eddie “Green Acres” Albert plays the President. A role that he does really well and it’s sad that he really is only ever known for being Oliver Douglas in Green Acres. Even though it is a sci-fi story about nonsense, it still feels “real” because it’s played that way on screen. There aren’t any tongue-in-cheek winks and nods to comedy or to the camera. Everyone is deadly serious.
This is far better than it really has any right to be. Getting past the slightly cheesy practical SFX in the film, it still holds up to this day. I really enjoyed this strange, non-horror, trip back in time. If you have Amazon Prime it is free on there and likely other places as well.
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