When a reporter plagued with a recurring nightmare finds out she has a brother in a psychiatric institution, she sets out uncover his connection and the doctor’s intentions before her nightmares blend into the day.

Think: Before I Wake meets Long Lost 

SYNOPSIS:

Della, a young reporter, is roused early by a nightmare. She’s in a car with a family of four as it crashes. This has been going on for weeks. Her husband insists she see a psychiatrist. At work, Della is tasked with looking into a car crash story, the death of a family, and she hears her nightmare. Digging through old stories she finds one that seemingly matches her dream. Hears it again. Confronting her uncle John about it, he confesses: it’s memory... of her parents’ death. There are four people since she has a brother who’s been in psychiatric care his whole life. Now Della starts seeing her nightmare in the daytime and she goes to see her brother, Howard.

He wakes early and draws all day. His caretaker, Dr. Cronen has housed Howard in an apartment within the clinic and says that Howard creates lucid dreams via drawing. Howard recently started to draw his memory of the car accident and gave Della the nightmare as a side effect. Dr. Cronen believes that Della and Howard share a connection and offers her unlimited visiting rights. Della agrees wanting to know her brother more. On her way out, Della slips and blacks out... wakes soon after... and, initially unbeknownst to her, elements from Howard’s drawings appear in her life. Her nightmare is replaced with one where she’s paralyzed in a bed. Meanwhile, Howard draws an elaborate mansion estate. As she reads more about Dr. Cronen’s work, her nightmares become visual hallucinations. Della realizes she may need clinical help. Dr. Cronen invites her to the mansion estate that Howard drew.

He insists Della will get better if she takes the same medicine he’s giving Howard. But Della has added things up, quoting Cronen’s own words from his articles and their previous meeting, she accuses him of using Howard to create lucid dream spaces, in fact, they’re all in one right now. Della flees with Howard in the car she used to get here and encourages Howard to draw for himself not Dr. Cronen. First, he can wake them up by recreating their car crash. So Howard draws it, his first truly own drawing in ages, and boom!

Della wakes in Dr. Cronen’s clinic... in the coma ward. Her uncle is there! Because he has been working with Dr. Cronen to first keep Howard a secret, but now to get Della to visit. Her slip wasn’t an accident, she was trapped. Meeting Della made Howard happier and draw more just as Dr. Cronen wanted, since he intends to create a dream world based out of his clinic. He just needs Howard to finish drawing it. But Howard now knows to draw what he wants and they’re still in a dream of his. He ends this dream by tearing his drawing and the dream space collapses.

Howard, Della, and John wake up for real. But Dr. Cronen and his staff are stuck in a coma. Della is uneasy, but forgives John, since he is her only real family. Back at work, Della writes an exposé on Dr. Cronen’s work. And Howard has moved in with John and draws his ideal family life with his uncle, sister, and their parents — the family that could have been.

Accolades:

Quarterfinalist: Screencraft Horror Competition 2022

Quarterfinalist: Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Award Season 6

HOWARD