It is a primal fear — that someone will get inside our minds and mess us up. That nightmare is made palpable in this scary psychological thriller directed by Neil Jordan and co-written with Bruce Robinson. The film takes seriously the potency of dreams to reveal the significance of the past and anticipate the future. In dream reality, anything is possible.
A serial killer (Robert Downey Jr.) is on the loose snatching up little girls and Claire Cooper (Annette Bening), an illustrator of children's tales and a mother, is able to see in her dreams what he is going to do next. Her husband Paul (Aidan Quinn) who is a pilot, a conscientious police detective (Paul Guilfoyle), a neurologist (Dennis Boutsikaris), and a psychiatrist (Stephen Rea) are all rationalists who believe her premonitions lie outside the realm of reality. Left completely to her own devices, Claire decides to let the killer lead her to him in her dreams. She even comes to think that, in some strange way, he wants her to stop him. The surprising finale is quite gripping.