10 Recent Movies Ruined By Terrible Endings

Dream Scenario boasts one of the most fascinatingly WTF concepts of any movie this year, as schlubby professor Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) finds himself inexplicably showing up in the dreams of people he's never even met, to the extent that it ultimately becomes a hysteria-inducing epidemic.

The increasingly absurd situation reaches a fever pitch when Paul's generally passive presence in people's dreams turns nightmarish, his Freddy Krueger-esque violence causing the general public to deeply fear him in real life. This leads to a violent incident at his daughter's school, at which point Paul is kicked out and seemingly ostracised from society entirely.

The ending then abruptly leaps forward in time to when the dreams have suddenly ended without any explanation, and Paul's experience has facilitated the invention of dream-travelling tech, primarily used by influencers to market themselves and their wares to others.

As for Paul himself, he embarks on a pitiful book tour, before using the newfound tech to visit the dreams of his estranged wife Janet, in turn acting out the very dream she told him earlier she wished to experience - him rescuing her while wearing David Byrne's iconic oversized Talking Heads suit.

Paul ends the movie by declaring he wishes the dream was real, and that's it. Though Dream Scenario certainly doesn't want for imagination, the excessively elliptical ending does suggest that Kristoffer Borgli just didn't know how to resolve the central premise in an even remotely satisfactory way.

It hits a hard stop so suddenly and devoid of closure, yet not in a way that feels especially poignant or gratifying in its ambiguity.