DREAM EATER (2025)

New On Demand and digital download from Eli Roth’s The Horror Section and Vortex Media!
Directed/Written by Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, Alex Lee Williams.
Check out the trailer here!!

Alex (played by co-writer/director Alex Lee Williams) is a sleepwalker, and his girlfriend Mallory (played by co-writer/director Mallory Drumm) is trying everything in her power to help him get through this. After a particularly grueling bout of sleepwalking that ends with a 9-11 call and a stay in the hospital, Alex and Mallory decide to get away from the stresses of the city and rent a cabin in the countryside for some peace and quiet. From the cabin, Alex and Mallory meet online with his doctor, while Mallory documents Alex’s escalating nighttime terrors where he claims to see a skull-faced monster in his dreams. The footage that makes up this movie takes place over the span of a little over a month.

On the surface, DREAM EATER has the makings of a really creepy one. The premise, while not the most original, of night terrors and somnambulism (the fancy word for sleepwalking), still means that there are going to be all kinds of potentially spooky moments where Mal wakes up and finds Alex talking on the side of the bed or worse yet, gone from the bed and somewhere in the house or worse yet, outside. DREAM EATER is full of these moments, and they indeed are quite scary, amplified more so by the first-person perspective of the found footage format. This format boosts investment because the hand-held camera places you that much closer to the action, as if you are living it out through the protagonist’s eyes—in this case, that being the most patient girlfriend in the world, Mallory. All of that makes for a truly effective setup as Alex’s night time antics deepen to more dangerous depths as the film goes on.

The setting in DREAM EATER works well too. As this cabin in the middle of a snowstorm might not be my idea of a perfect getaway, but it does seclude our couple in the middle of nowhere with the elements outside working in opposition of their own survival. This is a cold looking film and again, seen through the first person lens, places you right smack-dab in the middle of that dreary coldness.

The acting is decent as well. For the most part, it’s just Alex and Mallory on screen, and both feel comfortable in their roles. There are a few moments when the young actors don’t necessarily sell the drama going on between them completely, but those are made up with some very solid scenes of Mallory desperately trying to help Alex out of this increasingly hopeless situation. The professionals Mallory and Alex consult with online are occasionally stiff and exposition-heavy, but people are usually like this in these types of online meetings, so again, the acting isn’t the major issue with DREAM EATER.

The over-arching problem with DREAM EATER is that it is over-produced out the goddamn yang-hole. Between each scene are establishing nature of the snowy outside shots filled with orchestral music beats. If this is a found footage film, who, in the middle of all of this drama and action between this troubled couple, is going out in the cold and taking these shots. There are also scenes that run into one another, with the sound overlapping from one scene to the next. Again, unless there is a third star in this film, the footage, which is supposed to be found, should not be edited in this way. Again, found footage—actual found footage which this film is attempting to convince us that this is, should only have the hands of the person taking the footage. There is no editing process and if there is, a blurb at the beginning should explain to us that this footage has been edited together to present a clear picture of the events captured. But if that were the case, no police investigator is going to add in cinematic flourishes as establishing shots between scenes and overlapping sound from one scene to the next.

“But MLMillerFrights,” you might say, “Mallory is a documentarian. So maybe she edited these scenes together and added establishing shots in order to complete her documentary. Maybe she accessed the security cameras and spliced them in with the hand held footage and the online meetings.” Sure. Maybe. And late in the game, we do find out that Mallory is taking all of this footage for a potential documentary project. The problem is that on top of all of these found footage cheats, DREAM EATER has the most invasive musical cues I’ve ever seen in one of these films. I understand that documentaries often do have musical scores, but this is to highlight the tragedy and drama going on. Even if Mallory edits in the music, why the hell would she add in Don Music piano-head bangs every time something shocking happens? If this was a subject so close to her, why would she have a musical explosion to accompany the jump scares that occur frequently during the nighttime scenes? Within the context of the film, there is no reason for music. There isn’t an orchestra and a keyboardist out there in that snowy cabin with Alex and Mallory, so there shouldn’t be any goddamn music.

This, my friends is Found Footage 101. No music. No fucking music. You don’t put music in a found footage film. And for this to be a film produced by such a huge name in horror as Eli Roth, this sin is almost unforgivable. Shame on you, Roth. For shame.

And the most unforgivable sin is that I believe that without the musical score, this found footage would have been scary as hell. There are things that pop out of the darkness. There are things that will make you jump and maybe shart a little. But because the filmmakers and producers seemingly didn’t have faith that the audience wouldn’t know something scary was coming, they added in music. Because the jump scares weren’t potent enough in the producers eyes, they added a piano smash. Because those behind this movie think you are too much of an idiot or that their product is too weak, they had to shatter that illusion that this is untouched, first-person-filmed, found footage—the subgenre of horror that is most immersive and arguably most effective in instilling sheer terror in the viewer.

The real shame is that DREAM EATER is not a bad movie. All of the elements are there to make it terrifying. But someone missed the memo that music has no place in a found footager unless it’s coming from a radio or record player or being played by someone in the film. It’s that simple and because of that simple fact, DREAM EATER didn’t work for me. And that, my horror pals, is a damn shame.