Dreamland
Film poster
Directed byBruce McDonald
Written byTony Burgess
Patrick Whistler
Produced byJesus Gonzalez-Elvira
Sebastian Schelenz
StarringStephen McHattie
Juliette Lewis
Henry Rollins
Tómas Lemarquis
CinematographyRichard Van Oosterhout
Edited byDuff Smith
Music byJonathan Goldsmith
Production
companies
Calach Films
Goodbye Productions
Velvet Films
Distributed byA71 Entertainment
Dark Star Pictures
Release date
  • April 14, 2019 (2019-04-14) (BIFFF)
Running time
92 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish

Dreamland is a 2019 Canadian fantasy drama-thriller film, directed by Bruce McDonald.[1] The film stars Stephen McHattie in a dual role as The Maestro, a jazz musician who has been hired by the Countess (Juliette Lewis) to play at the wedding of her vampire brother (Tómas Lemarquis), and Johnny Deadeyes, a hitman who has been hired by crime boss Hercules (Henry Rollins) to kill the musician.[2]

The film has been described as a "spinoff" of McDonald's 2008 film Pontypool, in that it jumps off from the post-credits scene in Pontypool in which McHattie and Lisa Houle were depicted in period garb speaking a foreign language.[3]

The film premiered at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival in 2019,[4] and was screened at various film festivals before going into commercial release in 2020.[1] It received mixed reviews from critics who noted the lack of coherence.

Production

The film was shot in Belgium and Luxembourg.[5] Its score was composed principally by Jonathan Goldsmith, although it also includes a jazz-based arrangement of Eurythmics' 1999 single "I Saved the World Today".[6]

Although not named within the film, the character of the jazz musician was loosely based on Chet Baker.[7]

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a positive score of 54% with rating average of 5.8/10 based on 37 reviews. The critics' consensus states: "While it may entrance audiences in search of the thoroughly strange, Dreamland lives down to its title by failing to cohere in any meaningful way."[8]

Alex Rose of Cult MTL wrote that "Though it would be simple to just call Dreamland second-rate Lynch and leave it at that, there’s both more going on here and less lofty ideals than one might expect. Where a lot of these films (recent examples off the top of my head include Terminal, Passion Play, Hotel Artemis and Mute) fail is in their absolute lack of a sense of humour; even the ones that are would-be black comedies tend to fall completely up their own assholes in a smug acceptance of irony as the end-all be-all. Dreamland, to its complete and utter benefit, is a film that both wallows in grotesque clichés and seeks to upend them."[1]

For That Shelf, Pat Mullen opined that "There’s some promise to the ludicrously violent doppelgänger schadenfreude between the McHatties. However, the all-over-the-map screenplay veers in too many directions. Dreamland evokes the hazy fever of a midnight madness flick. It flows in and out of scenes like a woozy couch potato channel-surfing at 2 AM...Dreamland often feels weird simply for the sake of being weird. One can only imagine which drugs had higher potency: the ones that fuelled the screenplay or the ones McDonald downed before reading it."[2]

Chris Knight of Postmedia wrote that "It's the kind of film that would have killed at the Toronto festival's Midnight Madness program, and it may have a harder time finding its audience in the scattered realm of VOD. But its boozy, Chet-Baker-meets-Eurythmics vibe (just wait for The Maestro's closing number) makes it a late-night trip worth taking."[9]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Alex Rose, "Bruce McDonald’s totally gonzo new movie Dreamland needs to be seen". Cult MTL, May 29, 2020.
  2. 1 2 Pat Mullen, "Dreamland Review: WTF Bruce?". That Shelf, May 30, 2020.
  3. ↑ Chris Vander Kaay (April 3, 2018). "[Exclusive] 'Pontypool' Spinoff Coming Soon and Direct Sequel in the Works!". Bloody Disgusting.
  4. ↑ Joseph Perry, "Brussels IFFF Review: Doppelgängers, Vampires, and Killer Kids Inhabit Bruce McDonald’s Dreamland". Diabolique Magazine, May 6, 2019.
  5. ↑ Todd Gilchrist, "‘Dreamland’ Director Bruce McDonald on How His Design Team Created a Key Sequence". Variety, June 5, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Vampires & Jazz: In Conversation With ‘Dreamland’ Director Bruce McDonald". BeatRoute, June 2020.
  7. ↑ Brad Wheeler, "With his strangely dark drama Dreamland, Bruce McDonald wakes up the weirdos: Midnight meets madness in a surrealist exercise in existentialism and deft satire". The Globe and Mail, May 29, 2020.
  8. ↑ "Dreamland (2019)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. June 5, 2020. Retrieved October 9, 2023.
  9. ↑ Chris Knight, "Vampy vampires; Dreamland follows its own set of rules but it's a voyage well worth taking". Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, June 1, 2020.
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