Reviews & Ratings for
The Dreaming More at IMDbPro »

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Oddball down under supernatural movie. I kinda liked it, 30 August 2008

Author: t-birkhead from United Kingdom

The Dreaming is a pretty obscure film of probably limited appeal to most, but it exerts a certain weird grip and is pretty watchable and interesting. It concerns a curse spawned when whalers attack some Aborigines and unleashed when archaeologists uncover some old artifacts. From here a young woman dies mysteriously and the doctor investigating is drawn into the mystery. Penny Cook does pretty well as the heroine, Dr Cathy Thornton and is suitably disturbed yet tenacious in her search for answers. She provides a sort of realistic core to the film, someone to follow as things get strange. Gerry Sweet does OK as her concerned husband and Arthur Dignam is fine as her distant, selfish father. I enjoyed this more than most seem to have done, its true that there are a lot of dreams and visions, that there is no gore really and that the film does not adequately explain itself. It does however have a good handful of arrestingly strange moments, one or two chills and a certain curious fascination to it. I liked the sense of mythology behind it and a lot of the imagery. There's also beautiful scenery and some very cool direction, an early scene at a hospital is particularly fine. All in all, this will most likely go over a lot of heads and simply appear pointless or boring to even more, but I'd recommend it to devoted fans of low budget head scratchers like myself.

1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Canadian Whalers Go Berserk and Taint Dreamtime, 9 September 2003
Author: douglasp from Madison, WI USA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Hi. This whole review is a giant SPOILER and you should read it before you waste ninety minutes of your life on this beautifully photographed yet tedious piece of story telling.

A bunch of Canadian whalers, at sea far too long without a hockey game to sate their blood-lust, land on Australia and kill all the Aborigines with sharpened hockey sticks and thus tainting the Dreamtime, which is the time of heroes, as you well know.

Skip ahead 400 years and an Australian archaeologist opens up a tomb that had sealed the demon spirits of the hockey players of the damned. Their spirits escape out and take over the body of the archaeologist, though he probably doesn't know it. And he becomes obsessed with trying to find the Hockey Stick of Thor.

Then other artifacts in the demon tomb are placed in a museum where decedents of the slaughtered Aborigines come to steal them. Or steals them back, as the political case may be. Then a very pretty girl who never speaks but cries very well sprays a fire hydrant at the museum's rent-a-cops, thus releasing the wrath of the tainted Dreamtime upon herself.

She is then taken to the hospital where a very pretty blonde doctor works on her. Then there's a few good bits that are worth seeing so skip ahead to the funeral of the blonde doctor's mother where we discover that she is the daughter of the Canadian hockey playing whaler possessed archaeologist.

The doctor has a few more hallucinations so she follows her da to the Island of the Dead, which is really more boring then it sounds. She finds her da chopping wood, because, I guess the actor didn't smoke and they needed him to be engaged in some activity when the doctor finds him. Then she delivers the best line in the whole movie:

I don't know. Its...lots of peculiar things have been going on and I don't understand them I've been seeing things and I haven't been seeing things and I've been seeing things and I...drawings and pictures and I don't understand and I'm scared and I don't know what to do because I don't understand what's going on.

And da tries to comfort her before he goes off and discovers the hockey stick of Thor, or whatever god or gods Canadian hockey playing whalers worship(ed). Then da really becomes possessed, just like in Thor comic books, and he kill everyone on the Island of the Dead in the most boring and tedious way imaginable. Except for his daughter, who he tries to rape.

There. Now you can watch a different awful movie. Or put in South Park again. You know you want to.

2 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
An emotional rollercoaster, 11 March 2002

Author: habib from peru

This film is one of the most impressive films ive ever bought for less than £3. It really shocks on all levels then spirals towards an incredibly tense finale which will leave you wishing to take stock of what is important to you in life.

And theres a bit where an X-ray starts screaming. Genius.

3 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Uneventful thriller, 5 September 2006

Author: Tikkin from United Kingdom

The Dreaming is a very boring and uneventful Australian horror/thriller. The whole film is basically loads of dream-like sequences which a woman has, as she attempts to uncover what lies behind it all. There is one good scene where an x-ray of a skull starts moving about and screaming, but other than everything is boring. There is no gore or suspense, the acting is limp, and the rather obvious conclusion is pathetic.

Don't even bother trying to seek this out, there are tons of more interesting films out there, even the really low budget ones.

2/10

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