Taglines: Get ready for a killer night out.
Dreamcatcher Movie Storyline. Dylan, known to his fans as DJ Dreamcatcher, who is on the brink of global stardom. Everything changes the night of Cataclysm, an underground music festival, where two estranged sisters and their friends meet Dylan. After a drug fueled gruesome event, things begin to spiral into a 48-hour whirlwind of violence and mayhem.
Dreamcatcher opens in a place that looks like its sole purpose is to dismantle bodies in a sex trafficking ring. Yet a low PR rep is handling business for her client, and picking up an envelope of cash, for some reason, is the most suspicious location ever. To no one’s surprise, she’s dispatched rather quickly in a gruesome and effective kill by the movie’s masked killer.
A decent start that shows off the type of gore we should expect with an interesting choice in garb. I was cautiously optimistic about where Dreamcatcher would go and if this could help elevate the rut slashers have been in as of late. Don’t @ me either; you know what I mean. So let us dig into this and see if it is worth a Jack and Coke Friday night viewing. Oh, and minor spoilers ahead.
Platonic friends Pierce (Niki Koss) and Jake (Zachary Gordon) are hanging out watching scary movies when Pierce’s sister Ivy (Elizabeth Posey) and boyfriend show up with surprise tickets to some sold-out rave with the “hottest” Dj. After a solid start, things started becoming worrisome once we get to the rave, where the first red flag appears.
Things become very dialogue-heavy, and though I’m all for a talky type of movie, I’m a bit more suspicious when it comes in the form of a slasher. With monologues that go on forever that don’t do much in developing the characters, it just makes you realize that the movie thinks it’s smarter than it actually is. After being seduced by Dylan, the DJ (Travis Burns), Pierce ODs while on a “spirit quest,” and here friends and family are too late to help.
So then Dylan’s agent Josephine (Adrienne Wilkinson) comes in like Winston ‘The Wolf’ Wolf, blackmails everyone, and cleans sh*t up real quick. Now with a plot twist like this, plus a masked madman on the loose, you’d hope that things would level-up and peak with a body count for the ages, but you know what?
This ends up being surprisingly tame. Pierce’s death is meant to be the catalyst for the story, yet it stalls, and we just hang out for the majority of the movie. Dreamcatcher is two different stories awkwardly fused to make what I assume is the Gen Z answer to Scream, only without the magic, charm, or heart of the slasher revival.
Dreamcatcher (2021)
Directed by: Jacob Johnston
Starring: Niki Koss, Zachary Gordon, Travis Burns, Blaine Kern, Olivia Sui, Emrhys Cooper, Elizabeth Posey, Adrienne Wilkinson, Lou Ferrigno Jr, Nazanin Mandi, Ryan Powers
Screenplay by: Jacob Johnston
Production Design by: Austin Johnson
Cinematography by: Matthew Plaxco
Film Editing by: Cody Miller
Costume Design by: Desi Aguilar
Art Direction by: Christopher Hohman
Music by: Alexander Taylor
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Release Date: March 6, 2021 (United States)
Visits: 24
