Review of Daydream Nation (2011) by Lauren B — 15 May 2011

Suspend your disbelief, and â~Daydream Nationâ(TM) has potential.

The filmâ(TM)s nonlinear narrative structure, visual style, and soundtrack (featuring Emily Haines, Stars, and Great Lake Swimmers) are enough to merit a viewing. Fortunately, they are also enough to keep the audience engaged in spite of a disappointing plot featuring caricatures clumsily spouting lines of dialogue that fail to convince anyone.

The film itself starts out sort of like a daydream and maintains a hazy, hallucinatory quality that effectively mirrors the main characterâ(TM)s histrionic narration and the habitual drug use of her peers. Her name is Caroline: a 17-year old city girl who has moved with her father to a small, suffocating rural town for her final year of high school. During the opening montage, she ominously describes the events that transpired during âthe year when everything happenedâ?. The imagery is simultaneously seraphic and sinister, like the time spent between sleep and consciousness when pastoral dreams are slowly permeated by a sense of dread before becoming nightmares. The town, nestled in an idyllic northern landscape, appears pleasant enough but we soon discover that appearances can be deceiving. As an industrial fire burns ceaselessly on the townâ(TM)s outskirts, the citizens are terrorized by a serial killer in a white suit who murders teenage girls and leaves their bodies in fields for young children to find. Signs are posted warning the townspeople to always travel in pairs; curfews are set to protect their daughters from becoming his next victim. In addition to being threatened by external evils, it quickly becomes clear that the town is rotting from the inside as well. The students at Carolineâ(TM)s new school are hostile, apathetic, judgmental, and perpetually high. In particular, Thurston Goldberg and his friends cannot seem to function without some sort of drug or toxic household chemical pumping through their veins. After briefly making eye contact at a party once, Thurston falls inexplicably in love with Caroline, but she is too self-absorbed to acknowledge him in the weeks following. Instead, she focuses her attention on her teacher Barry and, lacking anything better to do, promptly decides to seduce him.

At times, the plot approaches something unique or unexpected but repeatedly falls short. All of the characters are kind of despicable; Caroline is selfish, mean, and too âsophisticatedâ? to be plausible. Thurston could be likeable if he wasnâ(TM)t so pitiful, weak, and obsessed with Caroline and weed. Barry acts like a responsible adult for about thirty seconds before giving in to his busty studentâ(TM)s advances and later becomes infatuated with her. The screenplay is unfortunately clichà (C), but the visuals make the film bearable.