Before I wake is a horror movie by one of my favourite directors, Mike Flanagan. It follows a couple adopting a little boy, Cody, after the death of their son. Soon enough they realise that everything Cody dreams becomes reality. It starts of nice with a cluster of butterflies appearing; however, after a black insect bites Jessie, we find out that his nightmares also seep into real life. Knowing this, Cody is scared to sleep as he constantly dreams of a monster called the ‘Canker man’; this monster constantly telling Cody that he will always be with him.
When Jessie and Mark find out about Cody’s power, they force him to watch home movies of their deceased son. They do this as they know his dreams are based on what he sees in real life. At first this is successful as we see Shawn manifest in real life; however, the second time this happens Shawn is shown in a grotesque way with his eyes rolled back and bugs crawling out of his mouth.
We find out that Codys dreams/nightmares can also occur when he’s awake as he experiences ‘wake dreaming’. As the movie continues, Mark is taken by the Canker man never to be seen again. Feeling desperate, Jessie digs into Cody’s previous foster parents and learns that the wife was also taken by the Canker man. After learning this, she researches into Cody’s biological mother only to find out that his infatuation with butterflies comes from a toy his mother gave him when he was a baby.
We also learn that his mum had lost her battle to cancer. ‘Canker’ is a mispronunciation of cancer.
In the final nightmare, Jessie confronts this monster giving it the butterfly Codys mother gave him when he was younger. Seeing this, the monster is calmed and slowly transforms into Cody himself.
Dreams are basically conversations we are having with ourselves. It is said that every character in our dream is actually a part of ourselves; we all have things we try to deal with mentally and sometimes they come to play in our unconscious. The Canker man is a representation of his mothers cancer and the reason it runs his dreams is because he is still trying to make sense of what happened to his her. We can see this as we are shown a flashback of Cody visiting his mother on her deathbed and realise that the Canker man looks just like his mother before she passed away.
The idea of characters in our dreams being a part of ourselves is something that really caught my attention; I see myself looking into this even more.
Ayanfe III 