Being Film #21 for Hooptober 2025
As we roll into the last third of Hooptober 2025 the reviews are once again going to get slimmer. Horror is exhausting, y’all, and man can’t live on blood and gore alone. Thank goodness for Mike Flanagan, who is still batting 1000 after catching up with Before I Wake, his 2016 Netflix film (I did not know that) that eschews any blood or gore in favor of a more subtle film that leverages its frights in service of a story about loss and the lengths we may go to plug the pain it brings. Oh, and Thomas Jane makes some choices…
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Cody has been in and out of foster homes…wierd because he’s such a charming, polite young boy. Even weirder, because something terrible happened at each and everyone one of those foster homes. But Jessie and Mark Hobson don’t know any of that; they’re focused on overcoming the devastating death of their own young son, and perhaps becoming foster parents can help ease that pain. When they take Cody in, they begin to see strange things, like dreams coming true. When Jessie understands what’s happening, she decides to use that to her advantage. Unsurprisingly, there are consequences, the likes of which she couldn’t have imagined but should have, because if dream can come true, so can nightmares…
Let’s get this out of the way first: I really liked Before I Wake. For all the (well deserved) praise Flanagan gets as a horror guy, particularly in his Stephen King adaptations, I don’t think enough is written about the small, character driven touches he makes sure is in each and every of his characters. It’s not just in his scripts, but in the way he works with his actors. Kate Bosworth is great in this; she makes some choices I was not expecting in a film like this – especially a Netflix film, which sadly has begun to get a house style that is…less than appealing 90% of the time.
Not here, though. This feels very much a part of what Flanagan has been doing for his whole career (which, now that I think of it, it filled with Netflix productions, so, uh…), churning our great performances in small stories that dance and play in the fantastic without feeling mechanical or expected. I love the way the visual effects work in tandem with the story: they’re broad and bright that at first may look overly simple and obvious, but taken in the context of a child’s dreams coming to life it really works to the film’s advantage.
He also doesn’t go for the obvious ending. The way Before I Wake resolves itself doesn’t wipe away the sadness or pain. In fact there’s probably more to mourn by the time the credits roll. But Flanagan allows his story to sit with that pain, slowly accept the way it rubs and tugs, and gets to place where it just might be possible to move on.
What I may never move on from, though is Thomas Jane’s choice to go with the Jim Morrison lizard look. The hair, the slow-slung jeans…the fact that for most of the film he’s inexplicably barefoot…all I’m saying is God Bless and Long Live Thomas Jane.
Cinema Dual 
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