10 Terrible Movies That Wasted A Truly Brilliant Concept
8. Before I Wake
The Concept: Jessie (Kate Bosworth) and Mark (Thomas Jane) choose to adopt a child after losing one of their own.
They soon welcome young Cody (Jacob Tremblay) into their home, only to discover that the child's dreams and nightmares manifest physically while he sleeps.
Why The Movie Failed: Like The Invention Of Lying, Before I Wake doesn't really know how to define its concept, and it doesn't ever properly explain how the whole thing works.
In one scene, Jessie shows Cody an old tape of their dead son, hoping that Cody will dream of him at night and effectively 'bring him back to life'. Jessie's dead son then appears before her in the living room, but why? Cody is sleeping upstairs in the bedroom.
And is he just dreaming of a single dead child? That seems odd for a young boy with a wild imagination (earlier scenes show him dreaming up a group of colourful butterflies).
Before I Wake also turns into a formulaic horror flick in places, meaning the movie gets stuck somewhere between a supernatural drama and a jump-scare-filled, paranormal thriller.
The idea was a great one, and had the movie spent more time developing and exploring this idea instead of just using it for cheap scares, the whole product would have been so much more engaging.