Dream Scenario ★★★½

WHAT a great end to the 2023 film year.

Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s Fourth feature, Dream Scenario, is a wonderfully black comedy that tears massive holes in contemporary non-sensical thinking and lifestyles.

It also provides Nic Cage with another great role following his recent efforts in Pig and the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Cage is perfectly cast to manage all aspects of the fantastical and disturbing events that confront Professor Paul Matthews.

Paul is a complex person – an intelligent man dedicated to his wife and daughter, but exasperated by how his career has turned out to date.

His students are bored with his lectures on animal behaviour and his ex-wife has written an academic paper that he believes has stolen some of his ideas.

He insists on being credited in some way, even though at 50-odd years of age he hasn’t put pen to paper himself.

At the same he is struggling with the fact his teenage daughter is having dreams where she is in some kind of danger and her father appears but does nothing.

His ex-wife reveals she also had a dream in which Paul appeared but was simply an onlooker to events.

Then two other people have similar dreams. Other people recognise Paul’s face but can’t quite place him.

Suddenly everyone is having dreams that include Paul, always as a passive observer.

The phenomena eventually goes viral and Paul is caught up in the vortex of his new-found fame.

But suddenly everything takes a turn for the worse.

This a compelling, funny and thought-provoking film that holds a mirror to some of our most mind-numbing excesses.

Unfortunately, as usual, the kind of people it targets will continue to only see what they want to see in that mirror.