Dreamland (2019 Canadian film)

Did You Know?

• The film was shot in Belgium and Luxembourg.
• Its score includes a jazz-based arrangement of Eurythmics' 1999 single 'I Saved the World Today'.
• The jazz musician character was loosely based on Chet Baker, though not named within the film.

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a positive score of 54% with a rating average of 5.8/10 based on 37 reviews. The critics' consensus states: "While it may entrance audiences in search of the thoroughly strange, Dreamland lives down to its title by failing to cohere in any meaningful way." Alex Rose of Cult MTL wrote that the film benefits from a sense of humour, unlike many similar films, and that it both wallows in grotesque clichés and seeks to upend them.

Pat Mullen of That Shelf noted promise in the violent doppelgänger schadenfreude but found the screenplay veering in too many directions, evoking the hazy fever of a midnight madness flick and feeling weird simply for the sake of being weird. Chris Knight of Postmedia described it as a film that would have killed at the Toronto festival's Midnight Madness program, with a boozy, Chet-Baker-meets-Eurythmics vibe making it a late-night trip worth taking.