Come True (2020)
Directed by Anthony Scott Burns
Looking for an escape from her recurring nightmares, 18-year-old Sarah submits to a university sleep study, but soon realizes she's become the conduit to a frightening new discovery.
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What critics say influenced Come True
There’s a Prince of Darkness (1987) vibe to some of it, so it’s safe to say I land squarely with the delighted.
Like the rest of Come True , it’s an homage to Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness , specifically the dream sequence where a voice intones, “This is not a dream, not a dream.”
Although Burns references George A. Romero and The Shining — and his score echoes John Carpenter’s icy synthesisers — his film is more intimate and emotional than those horror touchstones, and so the whys of the plot ultimately aren’t so important.
“Come True” wears its many influences on its sleeve, notably the work of David Cronenberg and Philip K. Dick, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Donnie Darko,” with nods to “The Shining,” “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Terminator” thrown in for good measure.
Come True also exploits the patchy, out-of-focus “reception” these scientists receive while monitoring Sarah’s dreams, conjuring hazy glimpses of apparitions in a way that reminded me of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and its unsettling vision of vengeful ghosts in the machine.
The popularity of Stranger Things – and, less memorably, J.J. Abrams’s time-capsule Super 8 – recontextualized ’80s horror and sci-fi touchstones as cradles to rob and veins to tap.
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The film’s It Follows vibes are cool and moody, but a film should be just more than a calling card concept.
It could have taken a page from the book of It Follows and kept all of the technology vague but by going this way, it felt inconsistent, though it does explain it away and allow for suspension of disbelieve in favour of style.
There, she dons an all-white padded outfit and skull cap that resemble something out of “Videodrome” or “eXistenZ” (or Brandon Cronenberg’s recent “Possessor”), and is hooked up to machines via tangles of serpentine cables.
Come True’s vapid center is completely undone by a last-minute plot twist pulled right out of Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Real.
The visuals bring to mind the wall of television screens watching characters fall asleep in Shock Treatment and the invasive dream examinations in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind .
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“Come True” wears its many influences on its sleeve, notably the work of David Cronenberg and Philip K. Dick, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Donnie Darko,” with nods to “The Shining,” “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Terminator” thrown in for good measure.
“Come True” wears its many influences on its sleeve, notably the work of David Cronenberg and Philip K. Dick, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Donnie Darko,” with nods to “The Shining,” “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Terminator” thrown in for good measure.