Dream Eater (2025)★ 5.4/10
- Horror
Direção: Justin Hewitt-Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, Alex Lee Williams
Roteiro: Justin Hewitt-Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, Alex Lee Williams
Uma cineasta documenta a violenta parassonia de seu namorado durante suas férias em uma cabana remota na floresta.
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Alex Southey24 de outubro de 2025
Alex Southey24 de outubro de 2025It’s not quite that the found footage genre is limited, or has a ceiling; certainly someone is going to come along and disassemble the way we understand it, but that time has yet to come. Like a stripped down song, what it’s got to say becomes the selling point. What else is there to focus on? For example, the camera angles — ostensibly set up by the characters within the found footage film — can only be so clever.
Luckily, Dream Eater brings to the fore a creation that helps freshen everything up: parasomnia. Parasomnia is — in the world of the film — a known phenomenon that affects someone during sleep. They don’t just get up or walk around or mumble in their sleep, they perform paranormal actions (moving cups of water, increased strength, to name a few). They lose all sense of themselves.
Alex (Alex Lee Williams) suffers from parasomnia, and his partner, Mallory (Mallory Drum), wants to film everything she can to document it both for a personal creative project and, possibly, to give to their specialist.
There are a few plot issues, or character beliefs that don’t quite hang together (why are characters in the film gung-ho on understanding, or at least being open to, the idea that parasomnia is real, but can’t get their head around possession?), and occasionally the dialogue feels like a place-holder (“Not again!”). Maybe it needed more time to cook, but, for the most part, following the mystery of this psychological / medical / paranormal “issue” is a solid B-plot to the actual house events’ A-plot. As Alex unravels, Mallory embraces some of the out-there advice from parasomnia specialists that at first seemed absurd (to some of them), and we learn more about Alex’s family — how this parasomnia may be familial, and-or related to his deeply troubled chldhood.
The biggest problem with Dream Eater is its many web conferencing scenes. This is the reality of 2025. It is probably how we would get in touch with a personal doctor, depending on certain circumstances, but the acting as well as the editing seem a little off, as though the dialogue was not recorded in real time, but was — like a one-sided phone call — stitched together in post. It’s unclear whether or not this is the case, but either way, these are the scenes in which Dream Eater threatens to collapse under the stress of its genre (and therefore, in some cases, technological) limitations. There is showing frustration Alex won’t get help, and then there is frustration the film doesn’t move past the issue of Alex not believing it. There’s footage. There’s evidence. They can only have so many uncomfortable conversations before they move the dial forward or it moves for them via some outside pressure.
Even if one or two scenes are redundant, so-stars Alex Lee Williams and Mallory Drumm hold the screen with ease; its a pleasure to watch them engage, the more they get to do.
Overall, Dream Eater is successfully unsettling, fun, and sometimes even funny, in a horror subgenre that, although saturated, hasn’t seen a film this potent in some time.
Luckily, Dream Eater brings to the fore a creation that helps freshen everything up: parasomnia. Parasomnia is — in the world of the film — a known phenomenon that affects someone during sleep. They don’t just get up or walk around or mumble in their sleep, they perform paranormal actions (moving cups of water, increased strength, to name a few). They lose all sense of themselves.
Alex (Alex Lee Williams) suffers from parasomnia, and his partner, Mallory (Mallory Drum), wants to film everything she can to document it both for a personal creative project and, possibly, to give to their specialist.
There are a few plot issues, or character beliefs that don’t quite hang together (why are characters in the film gung-ho on understanding, or at least being open to, the idea that parasomnia is real, but can’t get their head around possession?), and occasionally the dialogue feels like a place-holder (“Not again!”). Maybe it needed more time to cook, but, for the most part, following the mystery of this psychological / medical / paranormal “issue” is a solid B-plot to the actual house events’ A-plot. As Alex unravels, Mallory embraces some of the out-there advice from parasomnia specialists that at first seemed absurd (to some of them), and we learn more about Alex’s family — how this parasomnia may be familial, and-or related to his deeply troubled chldhood.
The biggest problem with Dream Eater is its many web conferencing scenes. This is the reality of 2025. It is probably how we would get in touch with a personal doctor, depending on certain circumstances, but the acting as well as the editing seem a little off, as though the dialogue was not recorded in real time, but was — like a one-sided phone call — stitched together in post. It’s unclear whether or not this is the case, but either way, these are the scenes in which Dream Eater threatens to collapse under the stress of its genre (and therefore, in some cases, technological) limitations. There is showing frustration Alex won’t get help, and then there is frustration the film doesn’t move past the issue of Alex not believing it. There’s footage. There’s evidence. They can only have so many uncomfortable conversations before they move the dial forward or it moves for them via some outside pressure.
Even if one or two scenes are redundant, so-stars Alex Lee Williams and Mallory Drumm hold the screen with ease; its a pleasure to watch them engage, the more they get to do.
Overall, Dream Eater is successfully unsettling, fun, and sometimes even funny, in a horror subgenre that, although saturated, hasn’t seen a film this potent in some time.