The Dreaming (1988) User Reviews

Canadian Whalers Go Berserk and Taint Dreamtime

[douglasp · 9 September 2003]

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.

Uneventful thriller

[Tikkin · 2/10 · 5 September 2006]

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

Intense horror film.

[Hey_Sweden · 7/10 · 14 October 2014]

Cathy Thornton (Penny Cook) is a hard working doctor whose life is thrown for a loop when her archaeologist father Bernard (Arthur Dignam) unleashes a curse by going on a particular dig. Several months after the dig has taken place, a group of young aborigines try to pilfer artifacts from a university, believing the artifacts belong to them. One of them is mortally wounded during the attempt, and after Cathy has attended to the girl in the hospital, she becomes plagued by nightmares of savage dudes who resemble vikings and wield weapons that look like hockey sticks.

"The Dreaming" is not for those genre addicts who prefer really meaty and straightforward narratives. This story of exploitation and mistreatment of indigenous people is more like a waking nightmare captured on film, with lots and lots of genuinely spooky atmosphere. If potential viewers are so inclined, they'll simply go with the flow and enjoy the unrelenting doom and gloom. Things do get violent but never especially gory. The antagonists are definitely quite creepy and malevolent. The acting is quite solid from our three main performers. Cook is appealing enough for one to feel some sympathy watching what she goes through. Dignam (of the cult hit "Strange Behaviour") is effective as the dad, and Gary Sweet rounds out the star trio by playing Cathy's concerned & perplexed companion. John Noble of the "Lord of the Rings" franchise and the TV series 'Fringe' makes his film debut as Dr. Richards. The images are often striking and distressing, and everything is beautifully photographed (by David Foreman) on scenic locations and the music score by Frank Strangio is wonderfully sinister.

Recommended to fans of the weird and the obscure.

Seven out of 10.

The yawning

[Chase_Witherspoon · 2/10 · 29 December 2022]

Picturesque and technically sound but abysmally boring Ozploitation 'thriller' attempts to leverage the contemporary popularity of Penny Cook (fresh from 'A Country Practice' duties), but fails to excite. It's reminiscent of 'The Omen' in some imagery, and whilst the basic plot (concerning possession) is coherent, the pacing is tedious and the characters shallow.

Peroxided surgeon Penny Cook spends most of the film confused by the apparent apparitions she's begun seeing, the result of her archaeologist father's (Arthur Dignam) selfish (almost megalomaniacal) obsession with the excavation of an ancient Aboriginal burial ground. Gary Sweet also featured as Cook's legal eagle husband, becoming increasingly concerned by his wife's hysteria as it starts to impact both their apparently successful careers.

The water bill from the rain-making machines must've accounted for half the film's budget, trying in vain to cultivate a mysterious ambience which the laboured plot can't conjure. Heavy-handed symbolism denies the film any momentum, whilst cliched and over-used audio-visual cues (squeaky doors, creaking floorboards, howling winds) attempt cheap thrills which leave the film looking superficial and amateurish.

I'm not sure if the makers were attempting to make a deeper statement on colonialism, but the only dreaming I found myself doing was wishing I'd watched something else.

Surreal, nightmarish effort that recalls the horror films of the '70s

[drownsoda90 · 7/10 · 24 December 2022]

"The Dreaming" follows a doctor, Cathy Thornton, whose archeologist father uncovers an aborigine tomb on an island off Australia's south coast. Simultaneously, Cathy treats a dying young aborigine girl who succumbs to unexplained injuries. Almost immediately after, Cathy is haunted by nightmarish visions of boorish whalers torturing members of an aborigine tribe.

This Australian effort hits on a common theme endemic to the country, highlighting the clashes between the indigenous and Europeans, but "The Dreaming" takes it a step beyond the physical horror of the aborigines' slaughter, highlighting the metaphysical rift such violence inflicts on a spiritual landscape.

While this metaphysical theme is not exactly well-developed and sort of backslides into obliqueness as the film progresses, what "The Dreaming" succeeds at is a pervasive sense of dread. The entire film boasts gritty, dark cinematography--murky and off-putting interiors are countered by equally moody exterior cinematography, the latter of which is often shadowy and dark blue in hue. Within these settings are a number of chilling slow-motion hallucination/dream sequences the protagonist bears witness to, which are extremely effective and at times outright scary. The film's overall look is oppressive and gritty, and it visually has much more in common with the hard-edged horror films of the 1970s than it does of the decade in which it was made (I, for one, would never have assumed it was a late-'80s production had I not been made aware of it before).

Penny Cook makes for a likable lead here as the troubled doctor, while Arthur Dignam (known to genre fans for his role in 1981's "Strange Behavior") gives a mysterious performance as her archeologist father. The film does stumble a bit in the final act, which takes place on the storm-ridden island, at least in the sense that it seems to abandon its central theme without any clear resolution, instead morphing into a quasi-slasher flick.

The film makes a noble attempt at reaching a fever pitch in the last ten minutes, though it doesn't feel totally earned. Irrespective of this, "The Dreaming" is no less a haunting and menacing psychological horror film, and contains several truly nightmarish sequences that will etch into your memory. 7/10.

Boring and pointless

[scarmiglionne · 2/10 · 25 September 2022]

This is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. It almost has a decent concept, but that concept is little more than a half-baked thought that might have made a slightly amusing short film.

It seems like it is supposed to be about a curse, but the curse leads to very little. It retreads The Fog and the Shining if those movies were set in Australia and the filmmakers didn't know how to go about maintaining audience interest or in telling a coherent story.

I saw another review here say this movie has a message for colonizers. I really don't know what that message could be because the indigenous people don't really seem to come out on top and it was the curse of the dreaming that killed them.

An emotional rollercoaster

[hollywood_habib · 9/10 · 11 March 2002]

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.

A Great Aussie Thriller

[ladymidath · 10/10 · 23 February 2019]

The eighties seemed to be a time for good movies in Australia and New Zealand. Coda, Mr Wrong, Next Of Kin and The Dreaming. This is an excellent film that has some very frightening scenes and an edge of your seat finale. Penny Cook plays a doctor who treats a severely injured Aboriginal girl and become entangled in a truly frightening series of supernatural events that happened decades in the past. It has one of the most memorable scenes that involves an x-ray. I urge anyone who loves good solid thrillers and horror movies. This is Australian film making at it's finest.

Dread And Doom Down Under...

[azathothpwiggins · 11 July 2022]

Archaeologist Bernard Thornton (Arthur Dignam) uncovers an ancient aboriginal tomb on an island. Soon thereafter, he experiences disturbing visions of a massacre committed by savage whalers. Thornton's daughter (Penny Cook) becomes involved when she begins having similar visions.

This all leads to a tense and gory climax, where the secrets are revealed.

THE DREAMING is a bizarre supernatural tale from Australia. While it is rather a slow-burn, the nightmarish atmosphere is effective, and the creep factor is high...

Surprising Gem with a Message for Colonizers

[andrew-a-snider · 9/10 · 6 May 2022]

Snappy as any Hitchcock film.

Beautiful as a retro Maxell cassette ad.

Acted so subtly that I KNOW those people from my life, even though most people only get a few solid moments to establish their character.

This one's good. Don't skip it.

(skip the first 3 minutes of intro credits though, gd)