Sean Parker
Making its world premiere at the Chattanooga Film Festival this weekend, Racheal Cain’s Somnium affirms that dreams are within your reach, even if reality makes achieving them a nightmare. The film follows Gemma (The Ranger’s Chloë Levine) as she arrives in Hollywood from a simple Midwestern farm town to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Wide-eyed and hopeful, Gemma hits the ground running, finding a barely affordable apartment and going office-to-office handing out her résumé, looking for a way to pay for it. A help-wanted sign in the window of a medical office piques her attention, and seemingly within moments, she has a night job at Somnium, a clinic that promises to make your dreams come true.
Gemma is put on the overnight shift, where, pretty quickly, things get a little weird. For the first few nights, she has a guide in the detached and idiosyncratic Noah (The Collection’s Will Peltz), but after that, it’s just Gemma and the low-level hum of a late-night hospital setting. The creepiness factor is high, and viewers will likely draw parallels to Nightwatch or Graveyard Shift in Somnium’s singular flashlight-driven and isolative temperance, a fire Cain cleverly stokes for atmospheric tension while building a mystery surrounding Somnium’s patients and treatments.
That isolation haunts Gemma on her path toward achieving her dreams. She’s alone at the office and more alarmingly alone in her apartment. Her efforts to make friends leave her feeling awkward and out of place until she meets Brooks (Suitable Flesh’s Jonathan Schaech), a shady agent who sees Gemma’s potential, even if he gives off major big bad wolf vibes during his shadowy entrance. Brooks provides the social escapism Gemma needs when her seclusion breeds only regretful memories of leaving behind her ex-boyfriend Hunter (Homeland’s Peter Vack), who has started moving on after her relocation to Los Angeles.
While this may be Cain’s first feature, her cinematic aptitude is remarkable. Multiple shots in Somnium are remarkably gorgeous. Tonally, Cain plays with the light and darkness to infer Gemma’s deteriorating mental state. A dark shroud slowly envelops Gemma as her world becomes an onslaught of responsibilities, depression, and self-doubt. The appearance of a monster, usually under a failing fluorescent light or hiding in a dark corner, also speaks metaphorically to Gemma’s psychological state.
Additionally, Cain uses the background to create unease with viewers. I think it’s one of the best tricks in a horror director’s toolbox that goes underused, but Cain subtly slides the film’s monster in peripheral places, making for “did I just see what I think I saw” moments, which keeps the Somnium terror going while the story focuses on Gemma. Cain also masterfully draws your attention to the multiple predators circling Gemma in her new environment, from an egotistical receptionist-actress to her co-workers and friends.
Cain is also impressive in how she thematically embeds inspiration from several sources. Her revealed reference to David Lynch via a Twin Peaks poster on Gemma’s wall is only furthered by Gemma’s backstory of working in her family diner and the Black Lodge dream logic that shifts her between various locations during the film’s climax. There is a good amount of Mulholland Drive mixed in as well, notably in one particular scene, as people surrounding her embody new characters, and an alternate, ethereal Hollywood is created. Levine’s Gemma, at times, also seems to incorporate a fair amount of Mia Goth’s Pearl in her midwestern backstory, her determination to be a star, and through a similarly intense audition. During that scene, Levine is able to flip a switch to portray Gemma’s acting abilities and simultaneously shows off her own dynamic range. The scene captivates and enchants without the use of background effects and a big number. It’s just Levine giving one hell of a performance.
I find movies concerning dreams profoundly alluring, and I have been a big fan of recent films like Come True and Ultrasound. Both share some of Somnium’s ideas and aesthetics, though they tend to be more about nightmares than passions. Regardless, there’s something about diving into the soul of a character’s desires and fears that is captivatingly human and enthralling to watch. Though Gemma’s “dreams” are more aspirational goals, her struggle to realize them is created in a dreamscape of highs and lows. Director Racheal Cain does a fascinating job of blending these conceptual dreamscapes with Gemma’s ambitions and makes Somnium a beguiling watch. Adversely, the film sometimes gets weighed down by too much focus on Gemma’s personal struggles, causing her investigation into the worrisome activity she witnesses at Somnium to become secondary until everything weaves together nicely in the climax.
It was serendipitous to follow up my viewing of Somnium with Jane Shoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. Shoenbrun’s film contains a multitude of identity ideas wrapped up in a dream-like state of repression. The pursuit of happiness is a conjoining theme that relates to both films, even if what happiness looks like to each character is fundamentally different. Still, it’s fascinating how these films feel connected in how both develop their nightmarish yet illusory aesthetics. The climactic scenes in both films offer a look at time, indecision, and inaction in some regard, resonating from an internal prison of fear and plagued with loneliness that creates a questioning of choices. Both films also create intimate and relatable cinematic experiences.
Somnium is an experience I genuinely enjoyed overall. The film has a few pacing issues, but the knockout performance by Chloë Levine and her well-built character from Racheal Cain keeps the audience invested until the end. It also delivers several twists and turns, wades in dark waters of dread, and offers a spectacle of a finale before leaving a message of motivation and endurance. I don’t believe Somnium will be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is surprisingly hopeful, prompting viewers to reach for the stars and strive toward their ambitions, which is the stuff dreams are made of, after all.
Somnium has its World Premiere at Chattanooga Film Festival on Saturday, June 22, at 5:45 PM at The Read House. Those looking to attend can find information on purchasing tickets and badges on the Chattanooga Film Festival website.
SOMNIUM | Official Teaser Trailer
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