Mike Flanagan's Hush is the first film that comes to my mind when I think of horror and it'll ever be. It's not a perfect movie but the way Flanagan plays with his audience there, it's absolutely brilliant. And he did it again in 2017 with Gerald's Game. So, after years, I finally decided to check out Before I Wake, which came out about a year after Hush although it was supposed to release about at the same time.
The film follows a married couple, Jessie (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane), who, while still grieving the loss of their child, Sean (Antonio Evan Romero), decides to adopt. When sweet 8-year-old orphan Cody (Jacob Tremblay) arrives into their lives, everything seems fine. But soon, Cody's dreams start physically manifesting into reality as he sleeps and his dreams eventually become nightmares.
It is an interesting premise and because of Flanagan's other works, I was expecting a great plot. Unfortunately, the execution is terrible and what we follow is a series of plot holes, predictable twists and jump scares.
The characters are not completely flat but they come real close it. They do have some personality but they still are pretty shallow and tremendously underdeveloped --Thomas Jane's Mark is zero-dimensional and his only purpose in the film is to be a fun dad and a loving husband-- their motivations aren't that clear, and they are too kind and too perfect to be believable. And at the end, I didn't care for any of them, I just wanted the film to end.
A good cast could have helped with the messy script, but unfortunately, Before I Wake doesn't have that either. While Jacob Tremblay is very good and incredibly adorable as Cody, Kate Bosworth displays her terrible acting skills and inability to keep interested and Thomas Jane is given absolutely nothing to do.
As for the horror part, it barely works --so I guess it makes sense for Flanagan to insist on not calling this horror but supernatural fantasy or whatever. Anyway, the film relies too much on haunting images and jump scares to be very effective. It does play a little with you, but it doesn't have the great atmosphere of Flanagan's other film and overall it's too repetitive and boring to work. No wonders they struggled so much with distribution.
The film follows a married couple, Jessie (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane), who, while still grieving the loss of their child, Sean (Antonio Evan Romero), decides to adopt. When sweet 8-year-old orphan Cody (Jacob Tremblay) arrives into their lives, everything seems fine. But soon, Cody's dreams start physically manifesting into reality as he sleeps and his dreams eventually become nightmares.
It is an interesting premise and because of Flanagan's other works, I was expecting a great plot. Unfortunately, the execution is terrible and what we follow is a series of plot holes, predictable twists and jump scares.
The characters are not completely flat but they come real close it. They do have some personality but they still are pretty shallow and tremendously underdeveloped --Thomas Jane's Mark is zero-dimensional and his only purpose in the film is to be a fun dad and a loving husband-- their motivations aren't that clear, and they are too kind and too perfect to be believable. And at the end, I didn't care for any of them, I just wanted the film to end.
A good cast could have helped with the messy script, but unfortunately, Before I Wake doesn't have that either. While Jacob Tremblay is very good and incredibly adorable as Cody, Kate Bosworth displays her terrible acting skills and inability to keep interested and Thomas Jane is given absolutely nothing to do.
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| Netflix |
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