Review of Before I Wake (2016) by Mark M — 19 Jun 2016

Possibly writer-director Mike Flanagan's weakest film after the mainstream critical highs of Absentia (2011), Oculus (2013), and this year's Hush, Before I Wake remains - for the most part - a finely crafted horror film that ultimately suffers from an uninspired weak ending. Employing the talents of Thomas Jane, Kate Bosworth, and The Room's young star-in-the-making, Jacob Tremblay, Flanagan's Before I Wake is a tale of innocence, grief, and the paradox of dreams etched from the subconscious of a child. An interesting premise that has shades of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series - bar the '80s camp -, Before I Wake is an ambitious horror film, and for the first two-thirds of the film, it's not surprising that Flanagan pulls it off.

The film starts strong, opening by plunging viewers directly into a dark house, as a man flees something unseen into his son's room with a gun, and the intention to use it on the child. Are you hooked? You should be. Jacob Tremblay masterfully plays the son, Cody, who bounces from one foster family to the next, and finally into the Hobson home. Ratcheting both the tension and beauty of Cody's 'gift', questions increase as does the horror, from the tangible element of the Hobson's gleeful attempt to capitalize on Cody to heal wounds from the past to the unseen terror that begins to manifest due to the same 'gift'.

But for some unfathomable reason, as the film's third act comes to an end, Before I Wake wraps itself up in a pretty box, answering questions and stringing narrative pieces together as though marking off an unseen grocery list. For a film that enamors itself with familiar horror tropes involving children and parental archetypes, Flanagan's decision to drain the film of its array of supernatural mysteries proves to be the major point of inexcusable contention in a small bookshelf of excusable problems. In a sense, the writing by Flanagan and Jeff Howard in regards to the film's ending is brilliant, but wholly unnecessary, serving only to display the film's departure from Flanagan's usual maverick style of indie horror filmmaking, pushing Before I Wake into the same group as other middling studio horror films.