Paul (Nic Cage) is a biology professor at a small college, who learns one day that he has started showing up in other people's dreams. His daughter's, old acquaintances, his students, complete strangers.
At first this brings him fame, and he thinks it will help him to publish a book about ant shared intelligence or something that he's been talking about for decades. But as things don't work out the way he wants - he doesn't want to use his celebrity to hawk products, especially not Sprite - the nature of the dreams shift. Instead of Paul just standing around, watching what's happening to these people in their dreams, he starts killing them. Turns out people take being murdered in a dream by someone personally, and Paul becomes a pariah. Which he exacerbates by being defensive and playing the victim.
I think you have to enjoy cringe comedy to watch this movie. The first half in particular is just an endless stream of Paul humiliating or embarrassing himself by being awkward, passive-aggressive, milquetoast, and so on. The thing is, I don't enjoy that stuff. It's painful to watch, to the point I almost gave up on the movie 50 minutes in.
The second half, once things start the downhill slide, is actually better. Things are actually happening, instead of people just talking about how Paul never does anything. Students flee from him and vandalize his car. Waiters ask him to leave restaurants. And at least it feels like Paul's reacting genuinely, even if it's him being aggrieved and focusing on how much he's suffering. He's an ugly, selfish man with a victim complex, but at least he stops hiding it. When he gets kicked out of the house because he makes his daughter's school play all about him by insisting on attending when he was asked not to, at least he actually did something, even if it was just about the worst possible thing.
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