Main cast: Raphael Sbarge (Alex), Sarah G Buxton (Megan), and Kenneth Danziger (Kyle)
Director: Paul Boyington
In Perchance to Dream, poor Alex is plagued by weird happenings after his deranged mother hit him hard in the head. For example, a book comes to life and acts like a barking dog wanting to take a bite out of him…
Wait, is this another kiddie episode?
This is no laughing matter, because his girlfriend Megan sees these weird things too. He isn’t hallucinating, therefore.
She asks the help of her friend, a psychologist Kyle that also studies woo-woo stuff, and Kyle suggests that Alex enters the world of dreams in order to confront the nightmares that haunt the latter. Only then, will Alex be free of his hallucinatory torments.
As one can likely tell by now, this is A Nightmare of Elm Street—that is, if we take away Freddie, the gore, the horny creep stuff, and everything else that people watch that movie and its endless sequels and reboots for.
The end result is a long meandering episode of Alex shrieking and yelling at Megan as weird things happen around them for about one third of the episode, before Kyle shows up and has Alex wanders into a dreamscape thing containing predictable cray cray nuns, bullies, and more.
Because of the nature of this episode, it has far more special effects than a typical episode in this show. There is a nice opening shot zooming into the window onto Alex, but sadly, that’s the pinnacle of the technical brilliance in this episode. While there are some decent special effects now and then, most of the time it’s a downhill tumble from the opening shot.
Still, the story is alright, if predictable. There are no monsters or demons, just Alex having to accept his past or something to be at peace with himself again, blah blah blah—the usual.
The acting is alright too, although I wish Raphael Sbarge has used his Kaidan Alenko voice. That would have made the episode 10 times better, I tell you. Ms Sbarge is nice to look at, in a way, but it’s all about that voice where I’m concerned.
At any rate, this one is okay in a discount Baby’s First Scary Dream Horror Show way. It won’t stand out in any way or send shivers up one’s spine, but compared to the last handful of episodes, it’s an improvement.
