Carlos A.F Lopez’s short horror film Dream Creep explores the surreal question of what would you do if you started hearing voices coming from inside someone else's head?
Having received its world premiere at Sundance 2024, Dream Creep opens on a couple sleeping in their bed, when the man, David (Ian Edlund) begins to hear a voice coming from inside his partner’s head, emanating from her ears. As the pleas coming from within Suzy (Sidney Jayne Hunt) become more and more urgent, the couple find themselves having to commit heinous acts of violence in order to save themselves.
Set entirely within a single location, the setting of Dream Creep revolves around a couple’s bedroom, the place where people allow themselves to be the most vulnerable, the most “themselves”, and therein lies the quandary explored within the short film. Portraying a point of view of the partner of someone with mental health issues, David struggles to discern who is the real Suzy, the one existing in her corporeal body, or the small voice begging for help from within. What the film also excels at is, as well as David’s experience, Dream Creep also competently depicts the point of view of Suzy’s suffering from a mental illness perspective. Like many mental health sufferers, Suzy hurts the person she loves the most, feeling a disconnect between what she projects externally, to what is going on inside of her and displaying that experience of feeling like something else has taken over your body completely.
Despite its short running time, the film does an incredible job of increasing the tension as viewers are engulfed and sharing in David’s confusion and panic over having to make a truly life or death decision in order to save both his partner and himself. The single setting adds a claustrophobic tension, increasing the pressure even more on the situation the two characters find themselves in, with the gory practical effects a superb highlight as the conclusion reaches its crescendo. Dream Creep does what every good horror short should do in managing to capture an impressive amount of fear, tension and emotional reaction in a very fleeting moment.
5 Screams out of 5
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