Chad

Undeadcow

I'm glad to see Come True pop up on the subset list; nice pick, Bladz!

Last year I ended up really enjoying Come True because of it's experimental vibe and it's superior style over substance approach - it's a film that stuck with me a little more than most so I'll be curious to hear other people's thoughts. I'm looking forward to rewatching it again with the awareness of how it ends to see if it hits differently.

My earlier 2022 thoughts:
Come True (2020, 105 minutes) ★★★★★★✰✰✰✰ Bizarre blue hued dream film with haunting visuals and a who cares about the plot strange vibe that permeates through the film; the ending is out of nowhere which is perfect for the film.

clckworang

Not sure what to make of this one. There was a lot to like, but that twist ending just came out of nowhere. It didn't make much sense to me, and I sort of watched the movie twice.

Here's the thing, I had friends over and crashed for a section in the middle. I woke up around the time she hooked up with the guy. Once it got to the end, she grew her fangs, and we all were like, "OK, I guess this was telling how she fully became a vampire or something." And I think we would have been like that's cool if that was the case. Then it keeps going and gets to the coma part, and we're all like, where did that come from? My friends said I guess that's why things were so weird and didn't make sense through the movie. We had been commenting about how empty the streets were and all, which the twist at least explained.

I thought maybe I missed something and went back and rewatched what I missed and then the end again. I didn't really miss much, certainly not anything that made the twist make more sense. It almost felt like they didn't know how to end the movie so just tacked on a random ending.

So, everything we saw was going on in her head? This has all always been playing out in her head and their treatment was getting the message through? Or if was creating all of this in her head? If all we saw was the main woman and her POV, it would make sense to me, but we see other characters without her. They know things our protagonist doesn't know, yet they're all her. Then I thought maybe some of that was real life, but that doesn't make sense considering how the characters intersect. It also seemed to make the idea of the primal fear a moot point.

I don't know. Maybe I'm making too much of it. I don't mind getting fooled by a twist. In fact, I love it, but I don't like it when it feels like a cheat. This felt like a cheat. I'd love to hear what others think, though. I might have missed or misread something. Interesting pick.

Undeadcow

What images run through the subconscious mind?
Come True felt more pretentious this time. The blue tint and music score go a long at creating a great tone but the ending does feel random. Knowing the twist I didn't pick up anything too obvious that seemed to hint at it.
The sex scene really seemed much more rapey this time and I wonder if some of the vampire imagery wasnt a suggestion that she was ready for revenge as she woke. The twist that her friends were really exploiting her with rape and self serving experiments.
I dont think theres a clear correct answer. I got the impression that they were trying to send her messages to wake up so it contributed to shaping her reality shown in the film - or if they were just standing around her hospital bed talking some seeped in.

The chapters were titled after 'archetypes' from Carl Jung. Jung talked about a linked subconscious sort of hive mind with access to shared generalities (an ancesteral memory, like maybe the shadow creature existing within us all). If so I think that sort of 'dream analysis' thing might give the film more depth and flavor... but that might be giving it too much credit. A lot of stuff from Jung is obvious or has seeped enough into pop culture - I didnt pick up anything especially deep from Come True but maybe over my head

Spiderbite

This is exactly what I think happened but more on that in a second.

I was really really liking this movie. I was going to name it my best movie of the subset that I hadn't seen before. But then 3/4 of the way in, I started to lose hope. The shoehorned in love story. The deserted streets made no sense. Some of the storytelling just seemed to lose focus but then the reveal at the end fixed pretty much all of my complaints.

I believe Undeadcow hit the nail on the head. I personally think she was in a coma the entire time. Her mind was picking up outside conversations and actions and then her mind was just filling in the blanks as best it could. You have the poster of Weekend At Bernie's in her bedroom which threw off my timeline because what teenager in current times would have a poster of that? But looking back on it, it is telling you everything. Basically, a dead person being propped up and paraded around as if they are alive.

There is also a prominent, out of place, Terminator poster in the sleep hospital office. A vampire movie poster would have made more sense with the vampire 1st ending but maybe there was one and I missed it. Is she also a fan of sci-fi/horror films which helped mold the vampire 1st ending and all the weird sleep study contraptions (the outfit, wires, old looking monitors, etc.) that were 70's/80's sci-fi movieish? Did all this help her mind form the movie we are watching which is her reality?

I was really struggling with the timeline while watching it due to the above, the old car at her mother's home, the posters, and the way things just looked. But then you had her with an iPhone, how would her mind know what one looks like? Yeah, it had weird ringtones but since this movie was made in 2020 and since has been in a coma for 20 years, we are going back to the year 2000. The first iPhone wasn't released until 2007. So how could her mind create something it knows nothing about but look exactly like something we all know?

Riff also mentioned getting some of the footage in 4K which is a direct link to today's time but that could have been a conversation her comatose body heard. I kinda see clckworang viewpoint that she is seeing stuff that she has no way of knowing. But I have had dreams that I wasn't necessarily a part of, so I guess that could be created.

I definitely enjoyed this, but some pieces just don't make sense, even if you take the perspective that she is indeed in coma the whole time. I look forward to more discussion on it and plan to read some reviews for it as I haven't read anything other than the two above.

My rating: **** out of *****

clckworang

I've thought back on this movie some since I saw it. A bad ending can ruin a movie for me. This movie had just that sort of ending.

numbercrunch

I liked the movie and was definitely into it for most of the run time, but as others have said it meanders a bit and then the ending is questionable at a minimum

jacob_b

It took a while to get through a lot of the black and dream scenes honestly. It picked up in the middle and thought we were getting somewhere, then two random endings, one with the fangs and then her being in a coma for 20 years. Who knows what the true time line is seeing as there is both old and new stuff around. How she got in a coma and how they didn't pull it through the 20 years plus who knows if it is really 20 since they don't know where in the dream it would get to her. All kind of rubbish to be honest.

jholmes

I agree with most of you about the ending. This film has some interesting ideas around dreams and dream imagery, but there were some serious logic holes, like what happened at the clinic after the 2 male dreamers saw the shadow figures? That was all built up and then there was a cut, and we never went back. The ending, similarly, was muddled and disappointing as other posters have pointed out. The whole being in a coma for 20 years thing--it felt to me it was just not set up well enough to make that work, IMHO.

Bladz

I actually knew about Come True's soundtrack before the movie itself. I'm a fan of the group, Electric Youth, who scored it, and after hearing the soundtrack version of their song, "Modern Fears", I became interested in the movie. Speaking of the soundtrack, it's one of the highlights of the movie for me.

So the main character, Sarah, isn't living at home, though it isn't clear why, and it's obvious that her mom wants her home. It isn't until the reveal at the end of the movie, that this makes sense. Everything that happens in the movie is a dream that Sarah is having while she's in a coma. The dream is mirroring reality, since Sarah is in a hospital and can't be home. The sleep study she's experiencing in her dream is actually a new technique that's being used to try and wake her out of the coma. That reveal at the end that everything was a dream, was a nice little twist that I wasn't expecting when I first watched it.

There's a lot of symbolism in the movie and a second meaning behind everything, with some gnostic themes. The movie revolves around being asleep, dreaming, in a coma, sleepwalking, etc. There are also a lot of references to being blind. The white eyes of the woman in the laundromat, the patch over Sarah's eye, and Jeremy's eyes being gouged out at the end are some examples. From a gnostic perspective, we are souls trapped in a human body. Our true nature is spiritual, not physical, though we're not aware of this, and we identify with our physical bodies as being who we actually are. We are asleep, living a dream that we think is ultimate reality, when it isn't. We need to open our eyes, and wake up from the coma we're in, by achieving gnosis, and becoming who we truly are. We need to "come true" and become real. Not like the androids in the Philip K. Dick novel " We Can Build You", that Sarah holds in that library scene, because what is an android but something that convincingly looks real, but ultimately is just a fake copy.

Another example is when we see Sarah as a vampire. Vampires are undead creatures, they appear to be alive, but really aren't. They don't even have a reflection in the mirror. They are not what they appear to be, just like androids, and just like humans. Recognizing these gnostic themes helped me to appreciate the movie more because there is more to what is being said than what is just at the surface. The look of the film helps to reinforce that what Sarah is experiencing is just a dream and not reality, with the blue tint throughout, and everything looking cold and dark. I also love the score and think the music fits in perfectly.

Undeadcow

Thank you for this subtext - the gnostic themes had gone over my head and this line of thought makes me want to revisit Come True a third time. It is a shame Come True couldn't balance more obvious metaphor and accessible entertainment but sometimes the most interesting films require more digging.