I desperately wanted to love this movie since I loved its setup and premise: what if Freddy Krueger was a boring college professor who does nothing in your dreams? And it was cooler because I had just a did a rewatched the Elm Street franchise (and also just watched David Byrne in an oversized suit in Stop Making Sense… also an important plot point). But then things go blunderingly wrong and the movie wound up annoying me before losing me completely.

The flick stars a boring, stuffy, balding Nicolas Cage as a college professor who starts appearing randomly in other people’s dreams. He doesn’t know he’s in their dreams and he does nothing but show up. He goes viral and doesn’t really know how to handle it.

The idea of boring Freddy Krueger was fascinating… we all love dreams and having something make so little sense scientifically was interesting. But then the movie keep chugging along and the question of what if Freddy Krueger, but boring gets answered with, yeah, that’s kind of boring. I was actively waiting for the movie to get to the point.

And when it did, I wished they had gone back and tried again. This subtle film gets as subtle as a sledgehammer as it blatantly flashes its theme at the audience: “Cancel Culture! Cancel Culture!” And, hey, a film about a person unfairly – or fairly – cancelled is one thing, a film that feels like a boomer railing about “kids these days” is another. It feels more like a guy with an axe to grind instead of a point to make.

But then the movie takes another turn and decides to bitch and moan about personalized advertising and social media influencers or something. And at that point, my eyes rolled out of their sockets. I appreciate a movie chucking it all and deciding to be about something else entirely, but maybe going from subtle as a sledgehammer to subtle as an atom bomb was not a good idea.

Objectively, I should give the movie a better rating because it’s filmed well and Cage does a great acting job creating a character he rarely plays. But subjectively, the movie annoyed me to the point I have to give it a lower score. Still within the realm of maybe you’ll like it, but I wasn’t a fan.

Score: 74