Director’s Statement

The focus of Dream Lover is to prompt the audience to question what is happening to Johnny. Is he in the thrall of a supernatural being or is he being abused without his knowledge? His night-time visions are dreamlike. The Girl is frightening and uncontrollable, governed by the gratification of her senses.  When the question arises of who The Girl is, the ambiguity of her presence is a challenge. Is she real, or something supernatural? From this stance, the film challenges the perceptions of acceptability within a supernatural landscape. If looked at through the supernatural lens, is Johnny’s encounter with The Girl erotic, and therefore, less disturbing, and more acceptable to the audience? Or, if she is an actual woman hiding in his flat, obsessed and taking advantage of him, is that more disturbing?

Dream Lover main theme is invasion. Invasion of the body, invasion of the mind and invasion of the home. These are personal and intimate spaces, yet Johnny moves about his home unaware that he is compromised by The Girl. The film explores this and the in-between state of sleep and awakening, where the lines of fantasy and reality are blurred.

Japanese horror is a strong influence on the style of the film. The Girl's appearance provokes our natural revulsion reminding us that she is ‘other’ and not like us. Johnny, by contrast, is a regular young man going about his daily life at home. The Girl’s placement in an ordinary and recognisable environment juxtaposes her creeping movements around Johnny’s home hinting at the supernatural. 

At night, her proximity to Johnny unnerves as she gets closer to him as he sleeps. Both Ju-on: The Grudge, and Ringu: The Ring were the most influential in achieving similar disturbing images with great effect in Dream Lover by working with light and shadow and using lingering low shots to show we, the audience, were active observers to Johnny’s life as we followed his movements around his home.

Like Johnny, the audience are trapped in his cycle of tired wakefulness and nightmare and observe his fate to endlessly repeat it.

In order to answer these questions, a feature is envisaged to explore how The Girl got there, and her history, and more importantly, her relationship to Johnny. In the short, Johnny seems to be the main protagonist, but is he? He seems powerless to his fate, and The Girl is the one holding him in her power. This will be considered further in the feature in a tale of two brothers, with one very much in love who becomes ill and dies leaving behind a distraught girlfriend and a grieving sibling.

The score is crucial in creating the tension and horror and choral singing and string instruments are used to create a sense of dread to great effect and put the audience on edge with the screeching plucking sounds. It slowly builds and crescendos when The Girl encounters Johnny in bed. The score has been originally composed specifically for Dream Lover as was the specially written and recorded track, Feel Me, at the end credits where The Girl is given a voice and her thoughts heard revealing what she wants from Johnny. The music is an essential part of Dream Lover’s impact as an effective short psychological horror film.