This is my first-ever film review, but this movie compelled me to do so.
Come True is a 2021 Canadian independent sci-fi horror film starring Julia Sarah Stone & Landon Liboiron & directed by Anthony Scott Burns.
Both of the lead actors are Canadian. The female lead, Stone, is a particularly bright rising-star in Canadian indie film circles.
The film follows Sarah Dunn: An 18 year old in high school who never seems to go home, and avoids her mother whenever she does. She sleeps where she can which is often on a metal slide on a playground.
Sarah also deals with the awkwardness of being seen as an outsider, and lives a seemingly lonely life with little interaction with friends or family.
Sarah tries to make arrangements whenever she can to stay at her friend Zoe's house, but eventually comes across an add looking for people to participate in a sleep study which is an ideal solution for her needing a place to sleep. Sarah also has nightmares involving a dark figure.
As she participates in the sleep study she continues to have her nightmares, and in one of her post-sleep interviews one of the researchers shows her a series of images asking if any of them mean anything to her.
The final image is of the dark figure from her nightmares causing Sarah to immediately enter distress of what is an obvious panic attack.
This causes another researcher by the name of "Riff" to spend some time trying to console her, and they begin a more personal relationship where he eventually discloses details of the sleep study to her.
She learns that her and the other participants in the sleep study are all haunted by the dark figures in their nightmares, and that the study is based around personal connections of the researchers to these same dark shadowy figures.
Learning this increases the intensity of her nightmares, and seems to bring the dangerous shadow-figures into her every-day life as well.
While growing closer with Riff, the two of them will battle with increasingly intense sleep-related symptoms and trying to discover whether the shadowy figures of so many people's nightmares are simply a primordial artifact of the human subconscious, or something much darker and more real than anything of their imaginations.
This film is everything an indie-film should be. It does more with less, and intelligently uses the strength of it's actors skills.
But never does anything about the film feel second-rate, budget, or "cheap".
The film's use of color was the first striking aspect that I noticed.
The use of color-theory in this film is beautiful, and atmospheric.
Everything is washed in a teal blue & greenish hue with complimenting yellow and orange highlights throughout.
The technology used in the sleep study has a sort of retro look & feel that adds to the unique use of color, and that's not all.
The music & soundtrack of the film is done by Electric Youth & Pilotpriest, and also fits perfectly into the mood and aesthetics with a post-modern 80's synth-wave vibe.
This is one of those movies that makes you nostalgic, and yearning for the mysterious and listless days of being a young-adult.
The main characters feel like people you know, or maybe you just wish you did.
I highly recommend this film. It manages to make you feel scared, nostalgic, and melancholic while also having an emotional undertone.
There's mystery, fear, and a last-minute twist that makes it very memorable.
