Review: ‘Dreamcatcher’ fuses high-style with commentary on the music industry
Jacob Johnston tosses his hat into the slasher ring with his new feature.
To really turn some heads, slashers these days must fall into one of two categories: a known money-making intellectual property (like Halloween) or be so totally inventive and bonkers that it’s undeniable (see: Freaky). Jacob Johnston’s Dreamcatcher falls into the latter category (while, at times, not totally effective), as it mines the dark, slimy underbelly of the music industry. A bright, neon-strewn lens certainly gives well-trodden ground a heightened surrealism, yet when the final act closes, you wonder: that’s it?
The film, also written by Johnston, centers around Dylan (Travis Burns), known to his legion of fans as DJ Dreamcatcher. When two estranged sisters Pierce (Niki Koss) and Ivy (Elizabeth Posey), along with their friends Jake (Zachary Gordon) and Brecken (Emrhys Cooper), attend an underground music festival called Cataclysm, a series of gruesome events begin to quickly unravel over the ensuing 48 hours. Dylan is set to headline the exclusive event, but a masked murderer has a far more deadly itinerary in mind.
Dreamcatcher beckons the viewer to behold a colorful, mind-melting reality — an invitation that pays off with super gory setpieces and one particularly mesmerizing hallucinatory sequence. Even more, there is a surprising emotional center out of which everything transpires. “No one has the power to measure someone else’s pain,” Brecken confides to Pierce in one of the film’s most poignant scenes. Such a thematic bedrock keeps the other high-voltage sequences firmly intact, so Johnston can then play around, quite handsomely in fact, with such a zany premise.
Dreamcatcher often shows its hand completely, for better or worse, and stacks on convoluted story beats and reveals that don’t feel earned. Risk-taking is one thing, but not when the curveballs aren’t set up in any way early on. In a post-Scream world, there is a tendency to arrange overly complicated character arcs or senseless decisions that drop out of nowhere, solely for the sake of out Scream’ing Scream. There is plenty to enjoy about the film — from the opening kill to a self-aware conversation about horror — and the film’s thesis about the monstrosity and soul-sucking nature of the music industry is quite fascinating. But the final product doesn’t stick the landing nearly enough.
Dreamcatcher hits VOD this Friday.
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