Movie · 2023 · Comedy, Fantasy · 1h 42m · R · English
Curator score: 7.1/10 (93.9K ratings)
Meet the man of your dreams.
Overview
Hapless family man Paul Matthews finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.1/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Metacritic: 74
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Kristoffer Borgli
Production
A24, Square Peg, Saturn Films
Cast
Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera, Tim Meadows, Dylan Gelula, Lily Bird, Jessica Clement, Dylan Baker, Kate Berlant, Star Slade, Josh Richards, Noah Centineo, Marnie McPhail, Paula Boudreau, David Klein, Kaleb Horn, Liz Adjei, Noah Lamanna, Maev Beaty, Marc Coppola
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, unsettling satire with a great Nicolas Cage performance and a genuinely original premise. It’s funniest and most effective as a cringe-comedy about fame, projection, and modern public shaming, even if the third act gets messier and less controlled.
Best for
Viewers who like dark satires with surreal premises
Fans of Nicolas Cage at his most awkward, pathetic, and magnetic
People interested in fame, internet culture, and social anxiety
Audiences who enjoy comedy that gradually turns uncomfortable
Skip if
You want a cleanly resolved story
You dislike cringe humor or secondhand embarrassment
You prefer broad comedy over tonal unease
You’re looking for a purely whimsical fantasy
Overview
Dream Scenario turns a ridiculous hook into something mean, funny, and weirdly sad. The film understands how quickly admiration curdles into suspicion, and how public attention can flatten a person into a symbol. Nicolas Cage is perfectly cast as a man whose ordinariness becomes the joke and the tragedy at once.
Worth noting
What works best is the movie’s deadpan escalation: the premise is absurd, but the emotional logic is painfully recognizable. It has the chilly, polished feel of an A24 satire, with flashes of body-horror discomfort and social nightmare comedy. The editing and visual ideas keep it lively even when the satire starts to wobble.
Bottom line
It’s not a fully satisfying film, and the ending feels less precise than the setup. But the central concept is strong enough, and Cage is committed enough, that the movie remains memorable even in its messiness. If you like your comedies to leave a bruise, this is worth the watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Jay 👽 (4.5★) · 13967 likes
nicolas cage farts and cums and farts
masterpiece
zoë rose bryant (3.5★) · 10804 likes
everything made sense when i saw “produced by ari aster”
David Sims (3★) · 5516 likes
collapses under its own weight and biffs the ending but there's stuff here
mothcub (1★) · 5102 likes
The tragedy of this movie for me is this:
Initially, it's an extremely funny exploration of an interesting, brilliant premise: everyone's dreaming about Nicolas Cage.
Sadly, the movie completely destroys itself by taking its protagonist from "sort of likeable buffoon loser" to "disgusting old pissbaby pervert" with one very uncomfortable "hilarious fart joke" rape dream scene about halfway through.
From here it swerves into a dull and predictable cancel culture comedy of errors and becomes an annoying slog. It was… more
Karsten (4★) · 4181 likes
didn’t know it was possible to make a funny version of The Hunt (2012)