In Dreams review

Psychological thriller In Dreams streams exclusively on Screambox on January 17th.

Bianca Brigitte Van Damme — daughter of Jean-Claude Van Damme — stars as Alma, a woman who experiences a psychological spiral in the wake of her grandfather’s murder. Shalim Ortiz (Heroes) and Vannessa Vasquez (East Los High) co-star.

The synopsis goes. A sexy thriller about a husband and wife who are taking a much needed weekend away to her family’s cabin to repair their troubled marriage. A mysterious couple shows up and things steadily spiral out of control until only one person survives the weekend.

Abandon all hope of no spoilers ye who enter here.

One thing I miss about watching movies in the late 1900’s is that you would go to the video shop, and 90% of the titles were the terrible Direct to Video output of some random studios. Often low budget fare that had fantastic covers on the cases that usually held little resemblance to anything in the film, but made you want to rent them. The horror genre was especially well fed with these, and even in the most terrible of them there was usually a nugget of brilliance somewhere along the way.

Today we have fantastic streaming services like Screambox that can put those kind of films onto their platform and you can take your chance with them as it’s included in your monthly subscription anyway so who cares right? Often finding a hidden gem this way to tell your friends about. I very much feel like this is one of those films that you should take a punt on, but don’t hold out for the hidden gem bit.

The film starts with a training montage, clearly selling us on the fact that this is Bianca Van Damme, the daughter of legendary action star Jean-Claude. She clearly knows how to kick ass so we can expect a whole load of action and ass kicking somewhere in this film. We see someone break into a house and drown an old man in a bath tub, and Alma wakes from a dream. Immediately we assume this is obviously a troubling recurring dream about her grandfather. She awakes from this nightmare and has sex with her husband, because of course she would. Gratuitous nudity is required in any film of this nature. This sets the tone that the marriage is troubled as her husband Eddie is a bit fed up with her mania.

I was already confused by this point but from here on in my face didn’t leave a grimmace of pure concentrated stock image confusion. As soon as people are speaking, the sound is awful, like you’re watching with your head in a bucket. I’m assuming The sound guys did this on purpose to create the oneiric feel of the story, but I think in reality it’s just low budget bad.

The couple head off to her grandfathers old cabin in the woods holiday home, along the way they meet the sherrif who it turns out Alma knows from childhood, another blatant Chekhov’s gun right?

They arrive and Eddie stumbles upon a shed absolutely chock full of weapons, giant bear traps and all kinds of hunting stuff. Alma says shes doesn’t even think she could kill or even hurt an animal, but obviously with the training montage we know this is just Checkov’s Shed right?

They unpack, Eddies brought a shotgun because his friend told him he should because of them being isolated in the woods. Checkhov’s shotgun?

Following a little bit more nudity, sex and a nightime visit from grandad another couple randomly appear in the house. Saying it’s some kind of weird Air BnB style mic up and they’ve rented this place every year for the past three years for a month (my brow creases nearly snapped my face at this point). Alma has a panic attack and calls her therapist (luckily in the phone as “Nathalie Therapist”) . The stranger lady goes to speak to her and tries to kiss Alma in a bit that makes absolutely less sense than anything we’ve seen so far.

The couples bond incredibly quickly, and they go on a walk and Alma has a freak out and shoots one of them (won’t tell you which one, leave it as a surprise), she wakes up again though and it’s a dream of course.

There’s definitely something not right about these two strangers though, but they put it all aside and have a few drinks.

Alma collapses, and would you believe it, it turns out these two are the killers of her grandad and the husband’s in on it for the inheritance.

I’ll just pause here to apologise if this is mega spoilery, but honestly it’s nothing that doesn’t jump out immediately and slap you across the face while watching anyway.

So they drag Alma into the woods and set a suicide by hanging up so they can call the police in the morning and say oh dear the crazy lady did done a dead and the police would believe them. Side note, the log they use to make it look like she stood on to hang herself is a few inches too small so she couldn’t have possibly used it and that would be obvious to any cop worth their salt, #justsayin.

The 3 amigos go back to the cabin, Alma wakes up hanging and gets free (remember that montage) instead of fleeing this scene of definite murder and ringing the poilce, she goes back to the house and sees her husband having some more gratuitous sex with the stranger lady. She creeps round and wakes up stranger lady’s stranger husband and he catches them in the act. They have a fight and the stranger lady beats the stranger husband to death, a lot, with a big heavy axe and covers a large area in blood (easy to explain that to those visiting cops in the morning right).

The Therapist is on her way, she rings Alma to tell her she’s on her way, leaving a voicemail to say she has called the cops.

Alma has a big old scrap with the stranger lady, remember the montage. Eventually she kills her by throwin an axe, the only piece of shed equipment used in this entire film, remember a shed chock full of death kit?

The Sherrifs on his way, but the weathers a bit bad so he kind of just gives up.

So it’s her vs her husband now and in something we never saw coming a mile off, she wins and drowns him like they did to her grandfather.

The Therapist arrives and gives her a big hug.

The End

But then it cuts to Six Months Later, and Alma is sat on the bench outside the house, heavily pregnant, Eddie comes out and joins her. She wakes up

What have we just watched? Was it real? A dream? A psychotic episode? You might feel like you’ve had one to be honest.

This film looks lovely, shot really nicely with some decent lighting and camerawork and overall good perfromances from the cast. It’s heavily let down by the audio, which during dialog is just plain horrible (and the dialog isn’t great either).

This may add to the overall psychological effect of the movie but it’s just horrible on the ears.

The multiple Chekhov’s guns that are never used feel like a missed opportunity to have turned this into a revenge thriller in the final third.

The fact that there’s only 3 members of the cast listed on the IMDB page of the movie might say a lot about the finished product.

Streaming on Screambox from the 17th of January it’s worth a watch if you can get over that awful sound, but don’t worry too much if you never get around to it.

Have you seen the film? What did you think? Did I miss something? Comment and let me know.

In Dreams will join Screambox’s growing library of unique horror content, including Terrifier 2, Pennywise: The Story of IT, Masters of Horror, 13 Nights of Elvira, American Mary, History of the Occult, and Toxic Crusaders.