Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) spends her nights sleeping outside, breaking into her own house in the morning to shower before heading off to school. The reasons why this teenager chooses homelessness over a warm bed is never fully explained. It’s one of the many ambiguous strands scattered throughout sci-fi/horror Come True, showcasing the experimental directorial style of Anthony Scott Burns.

Sarah is not just preoccupied with finding somewhere to sleep for the night, there’s also the added layer of being plagued by nightmares of an obscure menacing figure. Having to rely on the kindness of friends and her own limited resources, an advert for a sleep lab proves godsend. Participants in the trial have their dreams recorded, where actual impressions from their R.E.M. sleep appear on monitors like ultrasounds. Rather expectedly the bogeyman appears, but not only in Sarah’s dreams.

The whole thing is submerged in low light with dark blue tones to a soundtrack of brooding heavy synths, which along with retro looking technology inject an 80s sci-fi noir ambience. This is filtered creepily through an otherworldly mesh, as the ubiquitous darkness merges Sarah’s murky days with her tormenting nightmares, gradually obscuring the lines between the two.

This opaque bogeyman is always kept at a distance in dream sequences that aren’t particularly scary, but more striking in their dystopian beauty. As the film fluctuates from a Nightmare on Elm Street scenario to Sarah wanting to actually sleep, again it is unclear whether the disruption to her circadian rhythm is self-inflicted or the result of circumstance.

Yet through all the hallucinatory abstractness, there is a semblance of a plot to Come True, which is anchored by very strong performances. Burns shows real talent in creating something that is bold and meandering but still enthralling to watch.

RATING: 4/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Loiboron, Chantal Perron, Tedra Rogers

DIRECTOR: Anthony Scott Burns 

WRITER:  Anthony Scott Burns

SYNOPSIS: A teenage runaway takes part in a sleep study that becomes a nightmarish descent into the depths of her mind, examining the of the power of her dreams.