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Mariam and
Ahmed have been rather unhappy as of
lately and Mariam is struggling to deal with the
fact that her daughter seems to resent her. To
make matters even worse, Mariam is suffering from
bad nightmares - nightmares that soon turn into
reality. Someone is killing people connected to
Mariam in some way, but who could it be? And why
is Mariam seeing all of this in her dreams?
Wrongly labeled as Egypt's first horror flick,
Real Dreams is a real snoozer. See, not only
have there been horror movies produced in Egypt
before, but the fact is that Real Dreams can
barely be called a horror flick. I know for a
fact that local horror movies aren't very popular
in the Arabian world for some reason and maybe
that's why this ended up being more of a drama
than anything else - and not a very strong one
at that. You know what the worst thing is though?
It's two freaking hours long!
Mariam (played by the beautiful and very talented
Hanan Tork) is suffering from bad nightmares in
which she sees herself killing people around
her. When the people she killed in her dreams
start turning up dead, Mariam decides to try to
find out the truth about what's going on. Could
she be responsible for the murders? Now this may
sound like a horror flick but the truth of the
matter is that most of the focus lies on the
unhappy household and it's really not all that
interesting. In fact, our intelligence is
somewhat insulted in some unnecessary scenes
empathizing how much Mariam's daughter despises
her. Real Dreams really wants to be an American
slasher flick in Arabic language and it's just
unfortunate that they didn't dare to go all the
way with the concept.
Yes, Real Dreams is indeed a semi-slasher flick
since it has an unseen killer killing off people
at random. So again you ask, why don't I think
of this as a horror flick? Well the answer is
simple, all of the death scenes are off screen.
The most amount of gore we get is some fake
blood getting splashed on a wall (and it doesn't
even fit in). I don't know if it's due to the
strong censorship but as far as I know, Egypt
allows more gore than this in horror flicks.
I have to say though, the overall quality of the
movie was surprisingly good. The movie looked
and felt rather expensive with beautiful visuals,
a talented cast, and a director who clearly knows
what he's doing behind the camera. This actually
had a lot of potential, believe it or not, it's
just that the story was lacklustre and the horror
never really came through.
I love seeing horror films from all these countries
that you wouldn't think produce horror films and
I think Egypt has the potential to become quite
big in the business if they only try a little
bit harder and focus more on the horror next time.
I hear there's another Egyptian horror film
coming out called Camp so hopefully that one
will be an improvement over this. On the other
hand, getting your hands on Arabic films isn't
the easiest thing in the world.
Nada.
A positive surprise. The soundtrack was very
atmospheric and powerful with beautiful strings
and a strong theme melody. I liked it.
Egypt could become big in the horror industry if
they focused more on the horror aspect of their
horror flicks because Real Dreams is more of a
sappy drama than anything else. It's quite tedious,
slow-paced and unoriginal but it's got all the
right elements in it, they just didn't know how
to put them together very well.
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