Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Come True Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 23, 2022

I can directly relate to the sleep paralysis experienced by the female protagonist of Come True. I'm seemingly near the end of a dream but a shadow or specter is preventing me from fully awakening. The entity in my dream renders me mute when I want to tell it to go away. I also feel immobile when I want to escape its presence. It's a huge relief when I finally wake up and it's gone. Writer/director Anthony Scott Burns has stated in interviews that when his mother passed on he was eight, he began having sleep paralysis and while dreaming, he thought the shadow hovering over the foot of his bed was his mom but it turned out to be a phantom! Come True's lead character, 18-year-old Sarah Dunne (Julia Sarah Stone), also sees a black figure with glowing white eyes in her dreams. Sarah's dream world is very dark with monochromatic patterns. It's as if she's traveling through the caves of a mountain. The environment is populated by these ghastly figures as well as abstract elements in various geometric shapes and sizes. Burns's film is about oneironautics, the dreamscapes that Sarah traverses through in her sleep.

Sarah is having unspecified problems at home. She's estranged from her mom and runs away. She sleeps at the bottom of a playground slide. Sarah befriends Zoe (Tedra Rogers), who lets her sleep at her house as much Zoe's mom will allow. Sarah later leaves Zoe's abode after seeing the advert for a university sleep study that pays participants $12 an hour for 2 months. Sarah passes the interview conducted by Anita (Carlee Ryski) and earns enrollment. She's joined by three other females and two males. As part of the sleep study, Sarah is fitted with a skull cap and biomedical sensors. While she just wants to get a good night's rest, Sarah wonders about the study's purpose and how the data will be used. Anita and her graduate student research assistants aren't willing to divulge any information. Sarah becomes suspicious when her new roommate Emily (Caroline Buzzanko) leaves the clinic.

When she's out and about Edmonton, Sarah notices a guy ten years her junior following her around. He's in the same movie theater that she's in with a friend watching Night of the Living Dead (1968). Sarah also runs into him at a bookstore where he shows her a paperback of "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" and tells her about the "genius" of Philip K. Dick. He's Jeremy (Landon Liboiron), one of the sleep study's grad assistants who's nicknamed "Riff" after the character of Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Jeremy is the only one at the clinic willing to share particulars about the study. It's never made clear why Jeremy is so interested in Sarah.

Sarah gets fitted for her sleep study.

Come True is organized in four parts: "The Persona," “The Anima and the Animus,” "The Shadow," and "The Self." They're derived from The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious and works on the personality by Carl Jung. Having read Jung, I'm familiar with these concepts. Burns employs these concepts to explore Sarah's unconscious states and her phantasmagorical dream world. Burns has said in interviews that he got the idea for translating one's dreams into graphical images, which are displayed on retro mini-monitors, from a University of California-Berkeley journal article and video narrative. Come True combines different space-time elements with anachronistic objects. On the one hand, the research facility contains analog technology from the '70s and '80s. On the other hand, it also features modern cell phones. This demonstrates how the film's narrative blurs the lines between the real world and the more fantastical realms. Dreams seep into our everyday lives.

Come True concludes with a highly controversial ending which I'm won't divulge any specifics about. It doesn't really fit with what's transpired before and belongs in another movie. It sent audience members at the Fantasia and Blood in the Snow film festivals into an uproar. I can see why.

Come True Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scream Factory has brought Come True to US Blu-ray on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 that comes with a slipcover. Burns's second feature appears in its originally composed aspect ratio of 2.39:1. It appears to be shot on HD. There is barely any daylight. Colors have been desaturated. Burns loves using cyan blue (see Screenshot #14) and mauve (#s 4 and 7-10). The image boasts excellent facial details. See Dr. Meyer (Christopher Heatherington) in #3 and Sarah in #13. Scream has encoded the feature at a mean video bitrate of 35000 kbps.

Scream has provided twelve chapters for the 105-minute movie.

Come True Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (2351 kbps, 24-bit) and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo downsampled mix (1653 kbps, 24-bit). I concentrated primarily on the 5.1 mix for this review. Dialogue is clear and crisp. I felt the surround channels deliver subtle sound effects with aplomb. The heavily atmospheric music is composed by Electric Youth and Pilotpriest, which is Burns's DJ name. I became an instant fan of Electric Youth after hearing "A Real Hero," the song that was used in Refn's Drive (2011). Burns remixed Electric Youth's "Modern Fears" and "Runaway" reportedly before he began working on Come True. They're used remarkably well in the film and sound great on this lossless mix. In an interview with The Movable Feast, Burns said he took inspiration from the color schemes in Mann's Thief. The same can be said that Burns and Electric Youth took inspiration from the score Tangerine Dream wrote for that same film by Mann. Come True's score springs from that electronic soundscape but retains an originality the composers can call their own.

Scream offers English SDH and Spanish SDH, each optional.

Come True Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Scream includes only an original theatrical trailer and bonus previews for other IFC Midnight titles.

Come True Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Come True is a surreal sci-fi/horror thriller (albeit a slow-burn one) that cinematizes Jungian archetypes and dream worlds that resemble horror video games. Its features a remarkably mature performance by Julia Sarah Stone. Anthony Scott Burns is a most talented and versatile filmmaker. I only wish that he would have given his audience a better payoff in favor of the illogical ending he chose. It doesn't mesh with the rest of the story. Scream Factory delivers a competent and authentic transfer to go with a great sound track. There are no extras. At least one of the European Blu-rays contains a making-of featurette. If you're at all interested in dreams, this title definitely comes RECOMMENDED.