In Dream ~ Have You Ever Killed Someone in a Dream?

“In Dream” is a 2023 Korean film, categorized as Science Fiction (Sci-Fi), Thriller and Suspense, Crime and Mystery, and is streaming on Viki.

SUMMARY: Even though Hong Hwa is a dream-walker, her special ability could help the police catch a serial killer.

♦ My Friend is in Danger! I Saw Her in My Dream.

“In Dream” begins with these statements of fact.

• A university in England studied 24,282 people for lucid dreams in 2016.
• 55% said they experienced lucid dreaming at least once in a lifetime.
• 23% of them replied that they had experienced it regularly more than once a month.
• Some of them said they could control their dreams.

But are some can enter the dreams of others? You could call them dream-walkers.

Hong Hwa can enter the dreams of others. She’s not sure how she acquired this ability. However, she participated in a clinical trial for a sleep drug. The researcher told her there might be side effects, but she was not sure of what the side effects might be. It seems that dream-walking, i.e. the ability to walk into the dreams of others, is a side effect. Or is it?

Hong Hwa’s friend has gone missing. She has seen her in a dream and knows she is in danger. She tries to report it to the police. The police are dealing with a case involving a serial killer. Hong Hwa believes she saw the face of her friend’s abductor so she drew a sketch and gave it to the police detective. When he asked Hong Hwa how she knew and she explained that she had seen him in a dream, the detective told her to go home. The detective was exhausted from working on the case, as there had been multiple murders. He wanted to catch this serial killer before he killed again. But he needed to get some sleep.

Instead of going home, the detective stayed at work but slept on the job. Rather than going home, Hong Hwa hid herself inside a small room at the police station, took one of those sleeping pills, went to sleep and entered the dreams of the detective. She gave him a business card of someone he could talk to who could tell him about lucid dreams. When the detective woke up, he realized that Hong Hwa had been in his dream. He followed up on the “lead” she gave him in the dream and spoke to the doctor/researcher. Could this be possible? Could Hong Hwa actually help him find the serial killer by entering the dreams of others?

♦ Guess What? The Serial Killer is a Dream-Walker Too!

Hong Hwa is determined to find her friend so she continues to try to enter the dreams of others. But in the dream, she meets Jae In, the serial killer, face-to-face. He smiles and asks her: “Can you enter the dreams of others too?” He knows that her friend has betrayed her and wonders why she is trying to save her, instead of punishing her. He asks her why she is always suppressing her anger and most importantly, has she ever killed someone in her dream? In her dream, he gave her a gun and told her to go kill someone she was angry with. Someone who deserved to die because they treated her cruelly. In her dream, Hong Hwa killed more than one person. That’s something she would never do in real life. However, when it came to her friend, she would not pull the trigger; not in her dreams and certainly not in real life.

Hong Hwa pleaded with the serial killer. She did not want her friend to die and begged him to tell her where she was. The serial killer just can not understand why she wants to save her friend. Jae In doesn’t want her friend to live because she deserves a cruel death for betraying her friend. He just doesn’t understand why Hong Hwa keeps suppressing her anger. To him, it doesn’t make sense.

Will Hong Hwa be able to help the police find her friend before the serial killer hacks her to pieces like he did his other victims? Will she become one of the serial killer’s victims?

Main Characters:

• Hong Hwa (played by Seo Hyo Rim, “Sungkyunkwan Scandal”)
• Jae In (played by Oh Ji Ho, “The Grand Heist”)

Where to Watch

Viewership and Rating:

• IMDb rating: (no rating) out of 10 stars
• MyDramaList: 6.8 out of 5 stars
• Viki viewers rated this movie 6.7 out of 10 stars

My personal rating is the same as the Viki viewers.

• “A lucid dream occurs when a person is asleep but aware that they are dreaming. In this state, a person can take control of their dream’s narrative to some degree, essentially guiding and directing the course of their dream.” (Quote Source: VeryWell Mind)

The 2017 film “Lucid Dream” which starred Goo Soo was fascinating. In that movie, his child went missing and he wanted to see if he could explore the events of the day when the child disappeared by exploring his lucid dream. Perhaps there was something he missed that day that could lead him to his child. In this film, “In Dream”, people were also trying to solve crime through lucid dreaming. It was equally fascinating.  But not as good as “Lucid Dream”.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

Love and Leashes to Lucid Dream; Top 10 Korean movies on Netflix right now | PINKVILLA: Korean

List of Best 20 Korean Movies of All Time – IMDB Scores | VOX Cinemas UAE

TRAILER/TEASER:

OST Video Trailer, “‘In Dream’ ‘인드림’-Seo Hyo-Rim (서효림),Oh Ji-Ho (오지호) (2023),” YouTube, June 21, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCJVBQmQ2pg.