“Dreamkiller” is a slow, confused, implausible, unrewarding film that focuses more on the craft of a thriller than on the art. It’s founded on the premise that fear is our greatest obstacle, that the mind alone is capable of destroying us physically. It’s a good idea, but it has to have a solid plot to fall back on. Not only is the plot of this movie unstable, sometimes falling victim to severe lapses in logic, but it also includes characters that are weakly developed. Some, so far as I can tell, don’t belong in the movie at all. Amazing that it was directed by Catherine C. Pirotta, whose 2002 project “Nobody’s Fault” received top honors at the Peruvian Film Festival in her native Lima. Perhaps Hollywood has had a bad influence on her.
 
This movie is, in large part, a detective story, which raises the question of why a significant plot point is revealed before the opening credits with a caption for us to read. Assuming you haven’t seen it yet, I will do you a tremendous favor and keep this caption a secret. I will say that it relates to an experimental procedure designed to cure a patient of his or her worst fears. The process isn’t described in great detail; a set of headphones placed over the ears emit some kind of signal that put the patient in a fear-induced state. The brain is then neutralized somehow, and the patient turns calm. Running this experiment is Dr. Stalberg (John Colton) and his young assistant, Nick Nemet (Dario Deak), who doesn’t look like a scientist so much as a male model in a white lab coat.
 
As is inevitable in stories about medical experimentation, their patients are being killed one by one, each receiving a mysterious phone call before someone murders them. Strange that every crime scene shows no signs of forced entry and yields inconclusive fingerprint results. Stranger still that each death relates to what the patient feared most. And even stranger that Nick shares a psychic link with each of the victims. Genetics could be to blame; his mother (Roxanne Barker) has been plagued by visions for years, and now she resides in a mental hospital. But is it really that simple? Or has someone been tampering with Nick’s mind? He will offer a vague explanation for how fear makes us see what isn’t really there, but unless I missed something, then it makes little sense when it finally factors into the story.

Attached to the case are Agent Benett (Tyrone Power, Jr.) and his partner, Annette DeFour (Penny Drake), who, against her better judgment, quickly becomes personally invested in Nick. I can’t say I believed in this character, certainly not when her feelings for Nick turn romantic. Regardless, she’s the only one who seems to believe Nick, even when all the evidence points to him being directly involved in the murders. Is he involved? If not, then who is killing his patients? Who is making those phone calls? And what is the significance of a suicide that acts as the film’s prologue?
 
One of the film’s most unfulfilling subplots involves Nick’s kid sister, Natalia (Diandra Newlin). To say she adds nothing to the story would be an understatement; every moment with her is hopelessly strained, and this definitely includes the scene in which Nick frightens away her boyfriend, who appears to be no older than eleven (the actor is actually eighteen, which means either he has yet to go through puberty or this movie was filmed years ago). Considering the psychological nature of the plot, I honestly don’t know if Natalia is even real. If this is the case, there are much more clever ways to go about it. Have you ever seen “The Uninvited” or “Fight Club”? If she’s real, then I’m not sure why she has to be so low key and secretive. Either way, this character is completely unnecessary.
 
And then there’s the twist ending, which worked only in that it revealed something I wasn’t expecting. Who it involves and why are both immensely unsatisfying, probably because little if anything had been leading to this particular revelation. It’s not an ending so much as an exercise in creating surprises out of thin air. It was mechanical and anticlimactic, a twist that serves no purpose other than to be a twist in a mystery story.
 
I’m sure Pirotta and writer Clyde Ware had something better in mind when creating “Dreamkiller.” After all, no one wants to make a bad movie on purpose (apart from directors that are into campy send ups, which is clearly not what I’m talking about). Unfortunately, they didn’t go the extra mile. It needed a clearer story. It needed stronger characters. It needed actors who could convincingly inhabit their roles. It needed better dialogue. It needed an ending that actually worked with what had been building up to it. It needed polishing, period. This is Catherine Pirotta’s first feature film, so it’s too soon to write her off as an unskilled filmmaker. I can only hope that she will someday mature as a storyteller, especially as she gains experience working on future projects.

- Chris Pandolfi

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