'Before I Wake' Film Review: Why This Is NOT a Horror Film

Before I Wake is a 2016 supernatural drama film that was shelved for years before Netflix picked it up and released it on January 5th, 2018. The film has amazing performances by Kate Bosworth, Thomas Jane, and young actor Jacob Tremblay. It is about a young couple who recently lost their son and decide to adopt a little boy who has a peculiarly fascinating ability to make his dreams come to life—however, that also means his nightmares come to life as well.

The film has its pros and cons, some controllable and others not. The characters are real, relatable people with faults and problems, and the premise is intriguing enough. The heart of the story really lies within the little boy, Cody, as he's fighting the unavoidable urge to sleep and consequently dream. Cody is plagued with nightmares related to his past and he can't seem to make them stop. He is visited in his dreams by a villain he calls "The Canker Man" who is "always with him." This Canker Man devours at least one of the foster parents in every house Cody stays in, which is why he is moved from foster home to foster home.

I'll be direct. The only redeemable characters are Cody and the father, Mark. The mother, Jessie, shows her pain openly and makes you feel for her, until her grief causes her to use Cody for her own selfish desires. Honestly, these parents should not have been fostering any children. They are still too early in the grieving process (they even watch a video of their dead son with Cody—how many levels of CREEPY and WEIRD is that?) I really only kept watching to see what happens to Cody. The plot starts out really well, but then kind of falls into a cycle of sleep, dream, wake, repeat, and gets trapped. And while a slow start works for this kind of story, a slow middle does not. There are a couple minor plot holes that are really more of an annoyance for a storyteller like me than they are for general audiences. For example, why doesn’t Cody’s social worker investigate more into why his foster parents keep disappearing?

There are a few jump scares, but nothing more. The imagery is good enough, but nothing amazing. The dream encounters get repetitive and I found myself wanting to skip ahead. But this film's greatest fault is not by its own doing.

This was marketed as a horror film, and writer/director Mike Flanagan expressed his concerns with the film being seen as horror when it wasn't meant to be. So if you go into this film thinking you will be scared out of your wits, you will be SEVERELY disappointed. Instead, watch this film with the mindset that it is a dramatic and touching story with a supernatural twist and a little horror thrown in for a suspenseful effect. This is a character story, not a story that will make us fear what goes bump in the night. So to market it as a horror film really slashed (ha...slashed...horror...no?) its chances of being successful, because people were watching it thinking it was going to be the next Insidious or something.

Overall, I would recommend this film. It's nothing amazing or groundbreaking, but it's not the worst thing in the world. Jacob Tremblay’s performance is what really keeps the film from flatlining completely. There is something about seeing a child in distress and having a need to help them or see them through to the other side that this movie does a good job at. Too bad that’s pretty much its only driving force. The ending leaves a few questions frustratingly unanswered, but it will leave you thinking about what fear really means and where it really comes from, and I think if a film can make you think, or leave you with a piece of advice or a resolve, then it is worth at least one watch.

Rating Scale: 3 creepy dream butterflies out of 5