I don't have a great deal of respect for most of Nicolas Cage's work. I feel as though he is one of those actors that takes any role that is thrown his direction in the interest of making money and doesn't turn down roles that he and his agent can probably tell are bad for his career and overall image as an actor. He has a few really good films in his history of course such as Leaving Las Vegas and Lord of War but for the most part he has quite a few stinkers in there as well not to mention some ill-advised superhero films that some people like but a majority of people think were just dumb.
Dream Scenario is a type of film that I think is a bit out of Cage's wheelhouse but he took it on anyway and I thought the premise, plot, and overall execution of the film was pretty great as was the message behind the dangers of our current times and it almost seemed like a 90 minute episode of Black Mirror.
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Cage plays professor Paul Matthews who aside from being highly educated, is a rather ordinary man. He is ordinary looking, ordinary acting, and ordinarily successful in his career. There is nothing particularly remarkable about him and he just goes about his day-to-day activities living a typical professional life. Then one day people start acting differently towards him when he finds out that he is appearing in other people's dreams. Not only is he appearing in dreams of people that know him, which is how he first finds out about it, but he is appearing in millions of people's dreams all over the world even when most of these people have never even seen him before.
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At first he finds out that his involvement in the dreams is a very passive role as most people inform him that he is simply in the background of whatever dream he is involved in - just standing around while the real impact of the dream is happening around them. Later though, he finds that some people are having dreams involving him in active roles, sometimes in quite exciting and even sexual ways.
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This works out very well for him at first as he is seen as a global celebrity with one marketing firm's opinion of him being that he is the "most interesting person in the world." He has a great deal of newfound opportunity available to him because of this and large companies are interested in endorsing him and doors are opened up for him that previously had been closed due to him being, well to him just being an ordinary dude.
This is where things get interesting and we also get to see a side of Cage's acting abilities that aren't often showcased in his other films. He starts to appear in dreams in a very menacing and violent way and his newfound fame is turned into a rather global hatred of him and the internet starts to explode with calls for cancelling him even though he has done nothing wrong to anyone. He has no control over being in people's dreams and their image of him is their own creation. However, this being the silly modern times that we actually DO live in now in real life, the fact that Paul isn't actively involved in any of this is irrelevant to the angry Twitter mob out there that want his life destroyed because of their own brain activity.
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That's all I really need to say about that without spoiling the overall plot, but the reason why I enjoyed it was because even though the overall plot could be considered science-fiction in how impossible it is, Cage does an excellent job playing essentially dozens of different characters throughout the film. I've never seen him as a versatile actor because he always seems so wooden and basically the same person in every film he is in, but he really shows that he has what it takes to be one of the greats if given the right opportunity in films to do so.
Should I watch it?
Like it should be evident from what I have said so far, I found this film to be one of Cage's better works. For many, that isn't saying much because Cage has so much garbage he has released in the past but this one really stands out in my mind. Not only does Cage do an excellent job in his role as the ordinary professor, which I would expect of him, he excels at the other roles that he plays in this very inventive and unusual storyline. The fact that the film kind of hints on the dangers of modern technology and even hints at what it could become if we go to far, is just an added bonus. I enjoyed this movie immensely and believe others will end up feeling the same way.
As far as I can tell you cannot legally stream this movie anywhere: however, it is available for rent on a wide variety of platforms including Amazon Prime, AppleTV+, Google Play, and others