Come True: Mysteries of sleep become waking nightmare in new trailer

The trailer for Come True, a new sci-fi thriller, builds intrigue while recalling unconventional fare like Beyond the Black Rainbow and Thelma.

Sleep is one of the mystifying gray areas of human existence, and therefore one of the most fertile tropes in cinema of the fantastic. A Nightmare on Elm Street built a franchise from an iconic slasher capable of invading people’s dreams in increasingly elaborate ways, and now Come True peers into the existential void of slumber.

The trailer for Come True, which will see its premiere during the Fantasia Festival’s upcoming virtual edition, is brilliantly understated. Through deceptively simple imagery and a spare yet menacing ambient score (by Electric Youth and Pilotpriest), the trailer does what all trailers should: build intrigue without giving the whole movie away.

It begins with teenage Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone), being questioned by a female doctor regarding her sleeping habits. Through clever editing, we see Sarah looking over her shoulder as she rides a bike (though there’s no one behind her), and fleeing her home with a sleeping bag under her arm.

As these brief images go by, Sarah confides to the doctor that she used to sleepwalk as a child. Could this bit of character shading, combined with images of evasion, somehow tie into the old, bespectacled man gazing into the dank glow of undefined monitors?

There is something genuinely unnerving about sleepwalking imagery, and the Come True trailer captures a sense of an individual’s “difference” contributing to a greater feeling of isolation from the world at large. Furthermore, I like how it introduces only a handful of characters, and creates a disorienting mood from jarring edits to vaguely-defined locations. It feels like something assembled out of order, which only makes the finer details of its mystery all the more tantalizing.

While watching, I felt tonal reverberations from Joachim Trier’s sci-fi-tinged coming-of-age tale, Thelma. And the use of a simple yet menacing ambient score brought to mind the wonderfully minimalist sensibility of Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow. In other words…I’m squirming on the hook.

Come True will premiere on Aug. 30. You can purchase your tickets at this link.

Will you be attending the virtual premiere of Come True? Let us know in the comments.