Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Racheal Cain
Starring: Chloë Levine, Will Peltz, Peter Vack, Johnathon Schaech, Clarissa Thibeaux, Grace Van Dien
In the tradition of films like Mulholland Drive, Starry Eyes and The Neon Demon, writer/director Racheal Cain's feature debut Somnium is a horror adjacent neo-noir focussed on a young woman's attempts to make it in Hollywood. For a fortunate few, Hollywood is a place where dreams come true, but for most of the attractive young women who step off buses onto Sunset Boulevard it's a town where dreams go to die. It's also a place filled with predators eager to manipulate the dreams of the starry-eyed.
Cain takes this idea of manipulating dreams and makes it literal in the sleep clinic that gives her film its title. Responsible for boosting the careers of many an athlete and actor, Dr. Katherine Schaffer (Gillian White) now runs "Somnium," a clinic whose clients are placed in sensory deprivation chambers where they fall into a deep sleep. Aided by her nerdy young tech guy Noah (Will Peltz), Schaffer studies the dreams of her sleeping clients and manipulates them in a manner that will later intrude on their reality. It's essentially a sci-fi riff on the central idea of that old Oprah-endorsed baloney "The Secret," which tells its practitioners that if they want something they simply have to think hard enough about acquiring it. The difference between The Secret and Somnium is that the latter apparently works, this version of Hollywood filled with stars who owe their success to Schaffer's revolutionary methods.
When Schaffer places a "Now hiring" sign outside her clinic, the first to apply is Gemma (Chloë Levine), a naive young wannabe actress who just arrived in Hollywood from small town Georgia. Gemma is given the night shift, which leaves her schedule free for the auditions she believes she'll be called for. The job seems straightforward: Gemma is simply required to sit at the clinic's reception desk overnight and make sure nothing out of the ordinary occurs.
Of course, plenty out of the ordinary begins to occur. Gemma has visions of a tall, skeletal creature lurking in the shadows of the clinic. She hears odd sounds around her small apartment. Noah creeps her out with some low key workplace harassment. But she puts most of it down to a lack of sleep and isn't about to quit her job, with her landlord already harassing her for rent.
Away from the spookiness of the clinic, much of Somnium plays like a rather straightforward drama of a young woman struggling to make it in Hollywood. Gemma tries to use her Southern charm to make new friends but finds the inhabitants of Los Angeles a cold lot. She's taken under the wing of Brooks (Johnathon Schaech), a wrinkled Billy Idol lookalike who claims he can use his influence to advance Gemma's career. But before we can roll our eyes and exclaim "sure buddy," the film defies our expectations by making Brooks the most genuine person Gemma encounters, his interest in this aspiring actress purely professional. You see, the thing about Gemma is that she appears to be genuinely talented. What's holding her back is crippling self-doubt. Movies like this always have the obligatory disastrous audition scene, but when Gemma reads for a role in her one and only audition she absolutely nails it, clearly impressing the panel. It's only while leaving the studio that Gemma sees the next girl reading for the part, a more conventionally attractive starlet, that her expression changes from confidence to insecurity.
Levine, who has been a staple of American indie genre cinema since her impressive turn in the 2016 vampire thriller The Transfiguration, proves herself more than ready to make the jump into more mainstream fare with a dazzling lead performance here. She imbues Gemma with an adorable small town innocence while also making it clear that this is a very ambitious young woman who has taken a giant step in heading to Hollywood. Through flashbacks we watch as her small town slowly suffocates her and her relationship with dimpled douchebag Hunter (Peter Vack) falls apart. Levine's charm makes us root for Gemma to make it, and the fact that we like and care about her so much makes the film's sense of impending tragedy all the more affecting. We find ourselves torn between wanting Gemma to make it in Hollywood and willing her to get the next bus back home.
For a first-time director, Cain displays a striking command of atmosphere, mining much mood from the neon-lit streets of late-night Los Angeles and the clinical corridors of Gemma's workplace. Hollywood has long felt like a town aesthetically trapped in the 1980s, where the excesses of that decade continue to flourish, and Cain and cinematographer Lance Kuhns capture Tinseltown's sparkly surfaces in a manner that recalls the LA of '80s thrillers like Miracle Mile and Less Than Zero. This retro feel is compounded by Mike Forst and Peter Ricq's synth score.
It's in the final act that Somnium's narrative unravels somewhat, with a reveal that leaves us asking the sort of inconvenient questions we had previously been happy to overlook. But this a debut of great promise by Cain, one featuring a standout performance from a young actress who appears on the cusp of making her own Hollywood dreams come true.
Somnium is on UK/ROI VOD from September 8th and US VOD from September 9th.
