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I've been saving Long Dream for a lull, because I'm almost positive I'm going to like this one. Not only is it written by Junji Ito, whose manga I've really gotten into after seeing the movie version of Uzumaki, it's by the same director as that one. Double Uzumaki cred! Plus the box art is just plain nifty. Now, you can't tell a movie is going to be GOOD based on an awesome cover, but you can usually be sure it'll either be good, or it'll be so awful the only way they could sell it is with an awesome but totally disingenuous cover. Anyway, we've got a girl in a hospital, some creepy weirdo wanders into her room, she assumes he's Death and chases him away by throwing shoes, and claims it totally wasn't human. The doctors say it's just some weirdo patient though. Also, gah. These aren't the easiest subtitles to make out. People who put out DVDs REALLY need to watch some modern fansubs and see how it's done. There are ways to go that are orders of magnitude easier to read than nasty blocky nearly unbordered default titlemaker fonts.
Anyway, one thing I didn't catch until I was looking for a link to tell someone what I was watching. Apparently, this is a made for TV movie. Kinda shows. I mean, it looks GREAT considering, but we do kinda have this shot on a soap opera set in the off season feel to the sets. Plot's interesting though! OK, so the guy the staff assumes that girl was throwing her shoes at is in the hospital because, for some reason, when he falls asleep, he has dreams which, subjectively, last for insanely long periods of time, and getting longer each time. Here's him talking about one that went on for ten frelling years, and this is in a flashback. Not a pleasant one either, that particular one was about being in some nasty war, and ending up stranded alone in the jungle cannibalizing people.
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Now, here's the thing. In this flashback, we're talking about how these are getting exponentially longer each time, and this flashback was about a month ago. So at this point, his actual waking life is just a 16 hour stretch between a consistent persisting dream lasting, from his perspective, 500 years, then maybe 600 the next night. So yeah. There is absolutely no hope for this guy's sanity. He is eventually able to be talked back to reality, sure, because dreams are still dreams and all, but it's a freaky situation. Especially since, you know, you tend to cast people you see in your dreams, so getting back to screamy girl? Apparently he'd seen her earlier that day, gone to bed, had a dream about them being married for a few centuries, and then woke up, so, yeah, of course he walked in on her. And the reason she thought he didn't look human is, yeah, he really doesn't. He's kinda looking like Gollum. All his hair's fallen out, he's all gaunt from being perpetually stressed out and losing it while awake, and he has an awesome set of Junji Ito style bugged out eyes going at all times. Probably going to have a real nasty dream this night too after the screaming and being called Death and whatnot too.
Anyway, because this is not a movie with a lot of budget, we don't see things from his perspective. We're looking at the hospital staff mainly (which arguably makes it freakier). Well, mainly this one doctor here, who's having recurring dreams about his dead wife. This, we can assume, will go somewhere. Anyway though, you know how Junji Ito plots have to go totally off the rails some time, right? Yeah. So after freaking out about what would happen if he has a dream that just NEVER ended, and wondering what would happen in the morning, we find out. He just turns completely into this weird muppet thing, and collapses into dust. But hey, where his head used to be, there is now a pile of red rock candy. Doc's all HMMMM. I bet this is what caused his condition, and I could use this to prolong those dreams where my wife isn't dead into eternal happiness! Better test it first though. So he slips some to screamy fear of death girl, and, yup. Month long dream, kinda sporting the Gollum look in the morning. My cousin Bobby once wrote an odd little short story around a similar concept actually. And really, there's an interesting debate to be had over whether effectively ending your own life is worth it if you get several orders of magnitude more relative time out of it in hallucination land.
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Anyway, first night patient #2 goes on a 10 year dream bender, when she comes out of it she stabs a nurse to death thinking she's still in it. So now the doctors are all, well gee, do we have her arrested? I mean, that's clearly an insanity case there. Doc is at least totally for covering it up, probably helps that he knows darn well she's just going to disintegrate in about a month anyway. Also, he's apparently satisfied with his test results enough that he's on the dream extension candy now to. So... he's no longer mentally fit to be the main character. We are therefor now throwing things over to the less experienced doctor on staff, who is very typical of a Junji Ito Male Protagonist. Which is to say, a skinny aloof looking nerd with healthy paranoia and an inquisitive nature, for whom things most likely will not end well.
Oh hey, here's some plot. Apparently Dead Wife thought she had brain cancer, and was mercy killed by Doc. Of course, we learn that by way of Nerdy here investigating around and learning that she had a benign brain tumor it turns out, and was not at all suicidal. Oh, and he also finds Doc's vlog about finding the dream extension candy, liquifying it, and injecting that girl with it to see what happened. And now he's villain monologuing about it. Honestly though, yeah, he's crazy, and yeah, massive breach of ethics, but honestly? She was apparently terminally ill, and probably could have been talked into a clinical trial, probably after a bit of animal testing. There's a perfectly legal, and not especially amoral route he could have gone there. But no, instead you're going to freak out and cave in Nerdy's skull with a framed painting of your wife. After doing so though, he goes all Luke-in-training and sees his wife's face on the guy he just killed. Oh, correction, girlfriend. Plus you know, now he's got all this murderer guilt going on, so, those years long dreams of his? Yeah, not so happy anymore. Seriously though, gotta love those eyes. Anyway yeah, movie over. Only an hour long. And you know, honestly? You PROBABLY get about the same experience reading this as watching it. It's definitely more about premise than visuals. I don't mean that in a bad way though. What there was to look at looked neat and the basic concept is pretty awesomely creepy.
Ooh, fun bonus. The special features menu features an interview with Junji Ito. I might have to stick a shot of this in with the images when I'm done here. He TOTALLY looks like the main character from any given H.P. Lovecraft story. Twitchy slightly sketchy little weirdo who looks like any second he's going to totally snap from the maddening visions that pursue him. I'm actually really surprised. I totally would have figured him to be a real jolly easy-going guy, like most good horror writers. Especially after Gyo.
