Nicolas Cage delivers a performance worthy of fantasies, meeting the film’s wild tone with a grounded turn.

At this point, you can roughly divide the output of Nicolas Cage into one of two categories. First, there are films so tailored to his reigning wild man of cinema persona that it seems unimaginable they could exist if he passed. In the other camp are the quieter efforts like The Weather Man, Joe, and Pig that remind of what a powerful actor he still can be. His latest project, writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario, combines both approaches into a single offering. The result is a strange and wildly audacious work anchored by a surprisingly deft and low-key turn from Cage that stands in marked contrast to the weirdness surrounding him.

The actor plays Paul Matthews, a remarkably unremarkable professor of evolutionary biology. He seems to have almost everything a person in his position would desire—academic tenure, a nice home, and a loving family with wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and daughters Sophie (Lily Bird) and Hannah (Jessica Clement). Still, he yearns for broader recognition. Perhaps the book on the evolutionary habits of ants that he hasn’t yet bothered to write could be the ticket. 

Inexplicably, his dream comes true, but not at all as he hoped. It turns out he has begun popping up in people’s dreams. It starts small, first with his family, friends, and students’ REM cycles. Soon, though, he’s guest-starring in the unconscious fantasy scapes of countless people throughout the world. As a result, he becomes a celebrity of sorts, putting him in the sights of a hip social media marketing company hoping to capitalize on his odd gift. If he can infiltrate people’s dreams, why not sell them a Sprite or two while he’s there?

At first, despite his fame growing, Paul remains discontent. His presence in people’s heads seems passive—he stands around and silently observes what is going on. However, that changes with time. Increasingly, his dream avatar takes a more active role. For instance, one of the marketing company assistants (Dylan Gelula) confesses that she has had a rough sex dream involving him, an experience she’s anxious to realize in real life. The sequence is one of the strangest and funniest in the film, even if the punchline is pretty apparent. 

Then things turn much darker. Dream Paul becomes a sadistic monster who tortures and murders people. While no one truly dies and the actual Paul has done nothing, the switch makes him a pariah. Soon everyone, from strangers to his own family, winds up shunning him.

As the proceedings get stranger, [Cage] finds Paul’s humanity, ensuring the audience views the character as more than just a joke.

Essentially what A Nightmare on Elm Street might have been like in the hands of Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman, Dream Scenario is an undeniably ambitious work. It finds Borgli taking shots at everything from cancel culture to the myriad ways our economy and society commodifies even the most astounding of discoveries. As was the case with Borgil’s previous film, the art-world satire Sick of Myself, he doesn’t always connect. Nonetheless, even when he misses, he goes down swinging. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the story from meandering toward the end. It tries to make a move toward seriousness and sincerity that doesn’t quite integrate with the wildness of what came before it.

What saves the film, making it well worth watching is one of the more inspired Cage performances in a while. It is all the more impressive for how he avoids the temptation to match the often-outrageous tone of the material. Made up to look like a deglamorized Brett Gelman, he gets plenty of laughs throughout—often by doing nothing more than just standing. As the proceedings get stranger, he finds Paul’s humanity, ensuring the audience views the character as more than just a joke. He is someone who wants to stand out a little in the world. It isn’t motivated by massive ego or bottomless greed, but predominantly to impress his family, friends, and colleagues. While he certainly ends up standing out, he costs him them all in the process. This culminates in a genuinely poignant final scene that serves as a moving capper to a very strange film.

Dream Scenario wakes audiences with a jolt on November 10 in theatres.