Movie Review: ‘In Your Dreams’

By Vincent Volcano, retired Hellwood arsonist of emotion and defender of smoldering craft. Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever!

In Your Dreams arrives sleepwalking into theaters November 7 and onto Netflix November 14, which is perfect: the film is basically a bedtime story with a marketing calendar. It’s a PG animated “adventure” about siblings surfing their subconscious with a chatty plush giraffe, undead breakfast, and a Sandman who apparently took a gap year from mythology to intern at a focus group. The audience score is 68, which in mortal parlance translates to: “Kids laughed, parents checked email, critics called it ‘charming’ to avoid sounding like ogres.”

Let’s give credit where due: Alex Woo, in his first feature, at least knows where to put the camera—even if it’s a virtual one floating in a server farm where Pixar’s discarded shaders go to die. Co-director Erik Benson helps steer the dreamscape through a midpoint dip, and the script (co-concocted with Rita Hsiao and Stanley Moore) pretends to challenge family clichés before hugging them like a studio executive embracing a four-quadrant note.

The setup: Stevie and Elliot venture through dreams to fix their family dynamic while Mom’s career success and Dad’s slacker musician energy tug the household apart. It’s the kind of “fractured family needs one big imaginative odyssey” plot that modern animation keeps reheating like hell’s craft services leftover lasagna. In my day, we set a family on fire to unite them; now we send them to therapy via cotton-candy liminality.

Craft notes from an old pyromaniac:
– Visuals: The dream worlds are competently surreal: glossy vapor trails, architecture that Escher might’ve doodled on Ambien, and a breakfast-food zombie army that’s equal parts giggle and brand synergy. But the human faces wobble in the uncanny valley’s cul-de-sac—an early flashback has the kids looking like they were rendered by a nervous intern who feared eyelids. Thankfully, the design settles by the second reel, and there’s a cheeky anime flourish when powers awaken that briefly jolted me upright in my brimstone recliner.
– Editing: Smooth, tempo-friendly, allergic to risk. Every beat lands on a metronome you can set your popcorn to. Montage-to-lesson ratio: high.
– Score: Plucky, whimsical, instantly forgettable. The kind of soundtrack that says “feel something” while politely refusing to.
– Gags per minute: Respectable. Baloney Tony, the stuffed giraffe voiced by Craig Robinson, is your mandatory quip conduit. He’s cowardly until the third-act redemption cue, at which point heroism is toggled like closed captions. He works—because Robinson always works—even when the joke geometry is drawn with crayons.
– Villainy: Nightmara rules with designer menace, but like most family-friendly antagonists, she’s contractually obligated to be less interesting than homework and redeemable enough to license a plush.

Performances: Jolie Hoang-Rappaport and Elias Janssen carry the sibling banter with an earnestness that almost melts my basalt heart. Simu Liu and Cristin Milioti clock in as Attractive Parental Archetypes With Issues—fine work, minimal screen caloric burn until the third act. There’s a sense the cast was directed over Zoom while someone off-camera waved a squeaky toy. Still, line readings land, jokes chuckle, and the mic never peeks.

Narrative spine: predictable, yes, but efficiently engineered. We’ve got the inciting dream plunge, episodic questing through themed levels (Breakfast Necropolis! Plush Panic Promenade!), a mid-film family fracture with an “I don’t need you!” sting, then the “we do need each other” crescendo to satisfy your therapist and your four-year-old. It’s Save the Catnap.

What grated my charred patience was the algorithmic sheen. You can feel the pitch deck ghosting every scene: “Relatable family turmoil? Check. Toyetic sidekick? Check. Meme-able breakfast monsters? Double check. Anime nod for the teens and wistful strings for the parents? Ship it.” Nothing offends. Nothing risks. The dreams are safe. If that’s not the perfect encapsulation of modern studio animation, I don’t know what is.

And yet—begrudging praise time, stoke the embers—some sequences pop. A corridor of morphing doors that open on personal fears hits a genuine emotional register. A late beat where the kids shape the dream with joint intention, visualized as hand-drawn lines becoming reality, almost ignited my tear ducts (which are mostly lava). Woo and Benson know how to stage momentum, and the film’s brisk 91 minutes mercifully refuses bloat.

Parents: you’ll survive. Children: you’ll adore the giraffe. Critics: you’ll say “visual inventiveness” and “heartfelt core” and then quietly forget it by awards season. Me? I’m docking infernal points for the plastic texture of it all. In Hellwood, we risked third-degree burns for our practical nightmares. This movie risks a minor paper cut from a producer’s notes packet.

Verdict: Rendered with care, written with guardrails, funny enough, heartfelt enough, dangerous as a marshmallow. A perfectly pleasant REM cycle that dissolves with the snooze alarm.

Score: 6.5 out of 10 brimstones. Add one brimstone if your spawn are in a giraffe phase.

Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to rewatch Eternal Ember and remind myself what it looks like when dreams don’t come with parental controls.

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Vincent Volcano

Retired Hellwood Director & Film Critic at The Inferno Report

Once the mastermind behind Hellwood's most fiery epics, Vincent Volcano now lends his critical eye and seasoned perspective to the modern cinematic landscape. Renowned for his groundbreaking work in classics like "Inferno's Gate" and "Ashen Ascendancy," Vincent has seen the evolution of film from the golden age of Hellwood to today's digital era. In his retirement, he's turned his directorial passion into sharp commentary, dissecting current movies with a blend of nostalgia, humor, and a touch of cynicism. His articles are a journey through film history, filled with insights only a veteran of the industry could offer, and seasoned with a flair that only Vincent could deliver. Remember, in Vincent's words, "Flames Fade, but Classics Burn Forever!"

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