The Dream Eater (2024)

The Dream Eater is one of those horror flicks you find on the Netflix homepage a wind up watching just to pass the time. The synopsis and clips shown make it seem like a generic found footage movie trying to chase Paranormal Activity success. It is those things. 

The movie starts with the main girl, Mallory, deciding to vacation alone with her increasingly violent sleepwalking boyfriend, Alex. The characters make strange, stupid decisions because the poorly thought out plot couldn't continue without it. Alex's violence, creepy behaviour, and generally off-putting demeanour eventually forces Mallory to leave. Just in case anything goes wrong, she decides to leave her car keys with the homocidal sleepwalker who was just confirmed to be possesed by a demon by a poorly acted 'expert' on the situation. 

He dies, she lives pregnant, I've seen so many movies end like this. 

There's nothing wrong with being generic, but I find that Dream Eater takes multiple very strange approaches to the found footage genre it's copying. 

First of all, the music is non-diagetic. It completely kills any sound-based scares since I don't know what I should ignore as atmosphere and what the characters can hear. The footage is also frequently edited in the strangest way possible. Random jump cuts after every important moment. I kept asking myself, when did she find the time to edit this? This is never answered. 

The acting is just dreadful. There were multiple moments where I could tell the actor was struggling to remember their lines. They are stiff, unfeeling, and seemed allergic to improvising when a scene needed it. The jumpscares were also junk since no tension was built before hand. 

Overall, I gave it 3/10 since it wasn't offensive and had a legible story. If you'd like to see something similar, I reccomend Paranormal Activity, As Above So Below, and The Blair Witch Project.