Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams
Cosmic Horror meets found footage in the parasomnia-infused Dream Eater. Documentarian Mallory and her boyfriend Alex retreat to a snowy cabin, celebrating Alex’s 30th birthday. There, they hope to relax and get relief from Alex’s violent sleepwalking episodes. Unfortunately, fate would have it that something ancient and evil is behind his psychological traumas, and Mallory struggles to make sense of it before it destroys them both.
Madness and dreams are a staple of Lovecraftian horror. The Dreamlands beckon the unwary. In the Lovecraft Mythos, malevolent forces can infiltrate our minds and our world through our sleep cycle. The power of suggestion is strong, and there is only so much that our minds can potentially handle. Such is the struggle that Alex and Mallory are dealing with.
Dream Eater explores the fragility of the dream psyche, using an appealing couple at its core. This is as much a story of love and devotion as it is about madness. The found footage format is not always a great format for telling complex stories, but Dream Eater manages to explain its multi-layered tale with a whole lot of heart… and jump scares. Dream Eater exploits the power of found footage authenticity to ramp up the tension and scares. The beauty is that Dream Eater doesn’t use the first-person perspective for cheap thrills. This film earns its scares.
Dream Eater punctuates these fears, through an emotional bond between the characters and the audience. The characters are normal people with whom you can identify. Think of Paranormal Activity as a precedent.
The Cast of Dream Eater:
- Mallory Drumm plays Mallory, a documentarian between jobs. She has scrapped together enough spare change to treat herself and Alex to a vacation in the snowy Canadian woods and hopes this outing will be therapeutic for both of them.
- Alex Lee Williams plays Alex, a troubled young man, struggling with parasomnia and sleepwalking. While awake he is a goofy and charming man, but he remembers nothing from his nightmare episodes. He is an unemployed stage lighting technician and comes from a life living in foster homes as a child.
- Dainty Smith plays Dr. Snape, a therapist helping the couple with parasomnia. She has asked Mallory to record Alex’s episodes for analysis.
- David Richard plays Dr. Armitage, a Crypto historian who helps Mallory understand what might be causing Alex’s problems. His wild theories make Mallory think that Armitage is a quack
A Short Summary of Dream Eater:
Life has been stressful for Mallory and Alex, a young Canadian couple. Despite struggling to pay the bills between their jobs in the documentary film world, they have saved enough money for a long-awaited vacation in the proverbial cabin in the woods of Quebec. Alex has been waking in the middle of the night, muttering cryptic and only semi-coherent thoughts. He has also been sleepwalking, and more alarmingly, he has started acting violently during his semi-conscious dream state.
His therapist, Dr. Snape has recommended this getaway, and since Alex doesn’t recall any of his sleeping actions, she has requested that the couple film these encounters to see if this helps Alex recall what he might be going through. So far, he recalls nothing, and his waking self is charming and affable. As the snow falls during their retreat, the parasomnia gets worse. Alex becomes more aggressive and frightening. Eventually, these events take their toll on him.
Alex has been taking nightly trips into the crawlspace under the cabin, talking to a malevolent presence, and he starts having visions about a demon with a beard of snakes. Mallory grows more concerned about Alex’s worsening state, and she reaches out to Dr. Armitage, an author who describes the demon Alex has seen in his nightmares. Dr. Armitage relays that there may be an ancient evil entity that may be trying to possess him and turn him into the Dream Walker. This being travels like a curse, through troubled bloodlines. Alex’s past is a mystery, having been raised in foster homes. Initially dismissing Dr. Armitage as a quack, Mallory is in a race to determine to piece together the truth as Alex descends deeper and deeper into madness.
Evaluation
The power of found footage is the visceral and personal authenticity that is implied with the hand-held camera. Dream Eater utilizes a more controlled and professional documentary look (because Mallory is a documentarian) early on in the movie, and it descends into the visceral chaos of a GoPro aspect when Mallory needs to use the camera to see where she is going. It is always the responsibility of a found-footage shaky-cam film to justify the use of the hand-held camera. Dream Eater was quite successful in this, even when some of the third-person perspectives takes the camera out of the hands of Mallory.
Dream Eater won the best feature in an excellent year for feature films at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Why? Simply put, Dream Eater is successfully scary. As much as I typically dislike found footage films, one thing this format excels at is the jump scare. Alex Lee Williams transforms from a silly and adorable character into a raving wild-eyed lunatic who pops up at the worst (best) moment possible. This is essentially a two-person drama. Williams and Drumm infuse their off-screen friendship into the characters, with emotional gravitas. Protagonists you care about. It matters.
It is not a movie without issues though. Mallory has horrible survival instincts. Yes, love will color most impulses, but at a certain point, all of the horror survival tropes get violated. Don’t go chasing Alex into the crawlspace. Make a plan. Make sure you have the car keys on you. Be prepared. You have the foresight to do the homework, and all signs point to DOOM, so even if you think that Alex could be saved… have a contingency plan! Having said all that, it makes the third act into a roller coaster.
Full marks to the story and lore. The Lovecraftian exposition was handled really well. There is a build of the lore, but not an excessive build. I really appreciated the Dr. Armitage easter egg, and he was the perfect person to do the exposition dump.
Conclusion:
Dream Eater will find a home with fans of both found-footage horror and cosmic horror. The directing trifecta of Drakulich, Drumm, and Williams has been making some regional waves near Toronto, but I suspect that they could make a dent in the horror space. It was apropos that Aaron Moorhead was at the Festival as well, and getting to hang out with the four of them backstage in the green room helped convince me that they may be able to find a similar way forward as the Indie taste-makers Benson and Moorhead.
When looking for the ideal actors to execute what you want, look no farther than yourselves. Dream Eater is a slice of original thinking. It utilizes the evergreen Lovecraftian concepts of dreams, madness, legacy, and spins them into a fresh story. The film is Rated R for language, violence, and intensity. It is not a particularly gory movie, but it has a lot of shock moments.
Dream Eater has already been released in Canada, and the international streaming release (USA) will be coming soon. You will also be able to watch this on the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival streaming edition taking place from October 18 to 20, along with several other great features and shorts. Again, this was a very strong showing for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and if you missed it, now is your chance to catch the films online!
Review by Eric Li
Here is my backstage interview with the acting/directing team from Dream Eater. Alex, Mallory, and Jay were 100% engaged, and loving the festival. Enjoy!
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