Dreamland (McDonald)

MOVIE #1,509 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 04.02.24 Dense past the point of coherence yet somehow meandering, the wildcard entry for this 24T — director info here — follows every whim and indulgence to its wackiest and utmost (in)conclusion. Is there a vampire searching for his teenage bride? Yes. Is there a gang of child assassins? Yes. Is character actor Stephen McHattie playing dual lead roles with one of them wearing a terrible wig and the other a junkie jazzman? Yes. You know you're in for a fun time when Henry Rollins is second-billed and Juliette Lewis is third. It turns out the two characters being played by the same actor are cosmically linked but I'm still hung up on the fact that there are so many words to name your movie with, people. There shouldn't be two Dreamlands (2019) (fun fact: this came out just two weeks before the Margot Robbie Dreamland).

It all comes to a head at the vampire wedding where world leaders and luminaries gather and go insane, puking and doing lines, when Juliette Lewis (the vampire’s sister, duh) gets shot and then everybody in the room kills each other as the jazzman plays a cover of the Eurythmics’ “I Saved the World Today.” The child bride shoots Henry Rollins with a machine gun as all the other underage sex slaves are freed. I can't really argue with any of that, especially when the movie is so self-aware and clearly in on the joke.

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Dreamland is a 2019 Canadian fantasy drama-thriller film, directed by Bruce McDonald. The film stars Stephen McHattie in a dual role as The Maestro, a jazz musician who has been hired by the Countess (Juliette Lewis) to play at the wedding of her vampire brother (Tómas Lemarquis), and Johnny Deadeyes, a hitman who has been hired by crime boss Hercules (Henry Rollins) to kill the musician. This was released on April 14, 2019.