Directed by Anthony Scott Burns
Written by Anthony Scott Burns and Daniel Weissenberg
Starring Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Carlee Ryski, Christopher Heatherington
1 hour 45 minutes
Unrated – disturbing images, sex, language
In theaters and digitally March 12

by Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

The screen stays dark for an uncomfortable amount of time. Then, into view, slowly, we see the silhouette of a mountain. It’s black and white and looks like silent film footage. It’s fuzzy and unfamiliar. Then, as if being pulled on tracks, we move forward, past the mountain, and enter a cave. When we move out of the cave, a figure of a man is there, waiting for us. The front of his body is cast in shadow, except for the bit of light that reflects off the top of his head and shoulders. He is hunched over, naked, silent. In the background, a lighthouse, covered in fog. It’s nightmarish, spooky, uncomfortable to watch. Since the camera only moves forward in one direction, we feel trapped with these haunting images. Like an actual dream, we can’t look away. When we dream, we like to feel empowered that we have the ability to drive what we see. We don’t. The dread sets in.

Come True starts strong. These images are the dreams of 18-year-old Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone), who awakens in a sleeping bag at the playground. Sarah is homeless. Why, it’s never explained, because it’s not important. She bikes to her house, waits for her mom to leave for work, and goes in to shower a retrieve a few things. The use of current cell phones indicates the present day; film posters (Weekend at Bernie’s in Sarah’s bedroom; a Terminator poster in a lab), as well as a synth-y score, indicate an ‘80s influence. Plagued by nightmares and in need of money, Sarah finds a notice on a bulletin board looking for volunteers for a sleep study at the local university.

The nature of the sleep study is confidential. They can’t tell Sarah why there’s four men and two women, or what the purpose of the study is, or what all of the machinery she’s hooked up to is meant to collect. A typical sleep study involves an obscene amount of wires, tape, and glue all over your body (including your hair). In Come True, participants wear white full body suits and a fabric cap, as if someone knitted a rendition of the suits in Tron. Sarah sleeps, and is sucked in to another of her haunting dreams. In the morning, the student staff, including Anita (Carlee Ryski) and Jeremy (Landon Liboiron) show Sarah a series of images, dark photographs with faint horizontal lines on them. Sarah sees one, the figure of the man, and has a seizure. After accosting Jeremy and demanding to know what they’re studying, she finds out that, under the supervision of the peculiar Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington), they’re using new technology to observe people’s dreams.

It all fits together rather plausibly, and we never seem to question the science. There is even some thought and consideration that goes into explaining the process. For example, once we start drifting off to sleep, before we hit REM, we enter the hypnogogic phase. This is when we start to see shapes, which Jeremy shows Sarah on the monitor. Morphing squares and triangles, moving in a symmetrical pattern. Come True makes us curious, presenting us with a lot of unanswered questions. What are Dr. Meyer’s intentions? Some people fall into sleep paralysis, seeing the figure of the man in their waking hours. What is the significance of this figure, and why do all sleep participants see him? Why does only Sarah react the way she does? Who took her cell phone, only to leave it in the middle of a field for her to discover while sleepwalking? There’s a lot of power in these unknowns. Whether they’re on purpose or an accident of some plot holes in the script is a moot point. A mysterious wind-up box presents itself at one point in Sarah’s dream, which leads me to believe these moments have some Hellraiser-inspiration to them. A stumbling, grotesque figure made entirely of legs seems like something that could have walked out of the Cenobite dimension.

Come True is from writer/director Anthony Scott Burns, who directed Our House as well as the disastrous Holidays (in his defense, the segment “Father’s Day,” which he wrote, was the only watchable one). Julia Sarah Stone carries the film well, and she plays a believable high school senior, rather than just an imitation of one. In one tender scene, set to the song “Modern Fears” (by Canadian synthpop outfit Electric Youth, who also did the original score), Sarah witnesses captured footage of Jeremy’s dreams. He dreams of her. Liboiron, as her love interest, doesn’t fair as well. He opts for a blank stare and emotionless line delivery, and when their romance develops, it feels out of nowhere (not to mention inappropriate, given that she’s still in high school).

Come True is a mixed bag of mostly really good ideas and visuals, but a little shaky at times on execution. Burns should trust this material and where it’s going, but he doesn’t, and in the final moments, he cheats the audience. Did he not have an ending to his story? Still, there are a lot of good ideas here. I’m driven to watch it again, but I don’t know if I want to go back into those vivid dreams (that’s a compliment). With all the unanswered questions and roads that abruptly end in Come True, I wonder if would have been a better fit as limited series than a feature film.