Fever Dreams (2021) Film Review
When it comes to anthologies, and especially horror-based ones, a frame should be built around the plethora of ideas that will finally make it into the film. And in the scripting stage, there’s nothing more important than that frame.
A whole set of parameters that have to do with genre, a main idea about the mindset you want the viewer in. It sounds like film school, but you must build your idea around something that makes sense artistically.
In Fever Dreams there’s something hidden inside the result of a gathering of people who shared the same tastes. That’s undeniable. What is ultimately projected into the script and onto the screen is flawed in direction. The purpose is unidentifiable. The effect varies.
Sure this is an anthology and perhaps there’s something for everyone. But is it an anthology about what exactly?
In the center a narrator who’s actually a bum constructing his life from the underground. He embodies the evil that’s part of four stories that go from the laughable to the tragic. Of course some of them work more than others:
- The Agent: the most cinematic story of the bunch. An agent has to come up with a good script, and the one that’s delivered to him has a terrible nightmarish effect. It’s short and well acted, but its resolution is predictable, almost childish. It’s the only story that could work as the pivotal frame.
- The Entertainer: my favorite one. It tells the story of a guy who’s being interviewed about his late wife, and he reveals her body inside of a coffee table. However, she has been “restored” as a multitasking device. It’s insanely funny and dark. Perhaps a little bit too cynical for some viewers.
- The Cameraman: an unclear take on a relationship between mother and son. A camera is stolen for some reason and a wannabe filmmaker uses it for… something. With that disturbing approach (and good performers) it could have been much better. Its cinematography helps a bit to understand the tone of character and whatever the script is trying to transmit.
- It’s My House: it could be a pivotal story but its execution is terrible. A broker gets a surprise when he doesn’t make a good deal with an elderly couple. It’s a boring story (with a terrible sound mix) that’s only worsened by a visual effects shot that’s eerily amateurish.
This could have been fixed with a good frame story. I can guarantee that. That lazy and evil bum could have injected material to our general consideration (the “cryptkeeper-like performance was good at least). But Fever Dreams fails strepitously when delivering a set of stories that don’t have much to do with each other, or with darkness, or with the nature of evil that a “shared” character has.
