Review: Come True

Director: Anthony Scott Burns

Screenplay: Anthony Scott Burns

Year: 2021

Sarah is a teenager with a sleep disorder whose family conflicts lead her to run away from her house. Her refuge is a clinic that offers her a place to spend the night participating in a study about sleep disorders. During the research, Sarah starts having nightmares that become increasingly more horrifying.

“Come True” is an independent movie from the production house IFC Films, for which it is expected that the second full-length feature from the director Anthony Scott Burns (“Our House”) would lean more towards the artistic side, something that defines this production house. The director, who also serves as screenwriter and cinematographer, had an unquestionable talent for the last facet, which he exploits in this movie where every shot has an impressive visual quality. On the other tho roles, he falls behind. 

The plot of “Come True” follows Sarah and her sleep issues, which can be considered a deep character study. Both the actress that interprets Sarah, Julia Sarah Stone (“The Unseen”), and Burns himself in his role as a cinematographer, do an excellent work of showing and capturing the protagonist’s emotions. However, the story that surrounds her doesn’t do many favors.

The story around “Come True “ initially comes out as enjoyable, mainly because of Sarah’s conflicts and the nightmares she starts experiencing during the study. However, at a certain point, the plot takes a twist towards a more romantic aspect that feels out of place and that doesn’t contribute much to the story, only adding minutes to take it up to an unnecessary 105 minutes runtime. When it takes this twist, it starts losing sense and rhythm until it reaches the surprising ending.

The ending of this movie… Let’s say that even with its pacing, incoherence, and grueling runtime, I was enjoying the film until it reached this part. I don’t know how to describe it with adjectives other than disappointing and irritating. Neither do I see what Burns’ intention with this ending was, but it seems like he ran out of resources with which to tie the multiple loose ends throughout the development, and it takes the easy way out of by using a cheap excuse to justify why many things don’t make sense.

In this circle, the director Anthony Scott Burns has failed to impress us with his first movie, “Our House”, and his second creation, “Come True”. He does a great job as a cinematographer, but he doesn’t stand out as a director and does a horrible job as a screenwriter, betting for an ending that, instead of being surprising, is nothing more than a cop-out to hide the lack of creativity or having run himself into a roadblock he couldn’t find a way out of. Initially, he does many things well, but as the plot develops, he leaves way too many loose ends and incoherences that he ends up solving in an amateurish way.