Film Review

Dream Scenario (2023) — a cinematic sleepover you won’t want to end

A hapless family man finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams.

Dream Scenario is the fantastical story of Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), a biology professor and frustrated academic at a small Northeastern US college. Paul is a zero’s zero, or, as he puts it himself, “a remarkable nobody.” He’s a master of self-abnegation, simmering with resentment at his lack of recognition as he keeps the world at arm’s length and is consistently left off every guest list in town.

Even his lovely wife, Janet (Juliane Nicholson), who offhandedly refers to Paul as an asshole, may well have married him more out of pity than for love. Unsurprisingly, his teenage daughters, Hannah (Jessica Clement) and Sophie (Lily Bird), would rather hide in their smartphones than share a dinner table with him.

Then, one night, for reasons never explained, Paul begins appearing in other people’s nightmares, starting with one of his daughters. He plays no active…