STARRING: JACOB TREMBLAY, KATE BOSWORTH AND THOMAS JANE
RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 3, 2016 (LIMITED THEATERS)/RELEASED ON NETFLIX IN 2017
Still mourning the death of their son, Mark ( Thomas Jane) and Jessie ( Kate Bosworth) welcome foster child Cody (Jacob Tremblay) into their lives. Soon the couple discover Cody’s unusual ability. Before I Wake, directed by Mike Flanagan, brings a heart-wrenching twist to this horror film.
In this intense and heart pounding supernatural thriller, Jessie and Mark decide to take in a sweet and loving 8-year-old boy named Cody. Unbeknownst to them, Cody is terrified of falling asleep. At first, they assume his previous unstable homes caused his aversion to sleep but soon discover why; Cody’s dreams manifests themselves into reality as he sleeps. In one moment they experience the incredible wonder of Cody’s imagination and in the next, the horrific nature of his night terrors. To save their new family, Jessie and Mark embark on a dangerous hunt to uncover the truth behind Cody’s nightmares. Cody refers to the person in his nightmares as “ The Can-cer Man” but it’s not until you get to the end of the film do you get to find out how this imaginative figure came about.
Cody begins to build a connection with his foster parents like any other child would. Jessie tells him stories about her son and Mark does the normal things fathers and sons do but when the “The Can-cer Man” appears things start to go wrong. Anytime Cody goes to sleep his dreams are magical. They’re full of beautiful butterflies. His favorite insects are butterflies which stems from the connection he had with his birth mother. But as he continues to sleep those beautiful butterflies turn into moths and form the one thing that makes Cody hate sleeping and before it can swallow him he immediately wakes up.
As the film progresses, “The Can-cer Man” swallows people that seems to intimidate either Cody or even the monster itself. Two of those people being a bully at Cody’s school and sadly his foster father Mark. Jessie is determined to figure out why this figure continues to appear in his nightmares so she does some investigating starting with the adoption agency Cody came from. After reviewing his file, it leads her to a mental institution where she has a conversation with a man who was Cody’s foster parent prior to her and her husband.
The film ends with Jessie defeating “The Can-cer Man” who turns out to be Cody’s mother. The reason she appears so frightening in his dreams is because as her cancer progressed, her physical appearance changed and the sicker she got, the worse she looked. That’s how Cody remembered her so that’s how she would come to him.
Although it took awhile for the movie to get started as far as the plot goes, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and I highly recommend anyone with a Netflix account to watch it.
Before I Wake receives 10 stars out of 10 stars.