Russian directors continue to experiment with the horror genre unusual for Russian cinema. A series of horror in 2019 release opens "Breaking Dawn" - a picture of director debutant Pavel Sidorov, made under the strict guidance of the producers "Bride" and "The Queen of Spades" Vladislav Severtsev and Dmitry Litvinov.
Severtsev and Litvinov decided to continue to exploit their gloomy motives, replacing the win-win Gothic "The Bride" with experimental psychological games of sleep and waking. And also - to attract more eminent artists to work on the project. Therefore, in the caste of "Dawn" appear Oksana Akinshina, Oleg Vasilkov, Anna Slyu and Alexander Molochnikov.
However, the viewer must be prepared for the fact that there is almost no Akinshina in the frame - the actress plays the role of the mother of the main character Svetlana and dies 20 years before the events described in the film.
As a result, her face appears more often in photos from dusty files or in flashback dreams. But in the frame there will be a lot of Svetlana Alexandra Drozdova playing - that is why it is so important that the actress, for whom Rassvet became the first tape in her career, coped with the role more than well.
In the story after the sudden death of her brother, Svetlana finds his diary, from which she learns that their mother also died under mysterious circumstances. And - moreover - consisted of the mysterious sect "Dawn". The adepts of the sect believed in the existence of a certain Faceless demon who dwells in dreams and longs to be in the real world. For the answers, the girl goes to a professor working in a gloomy institute of somnology. The scientist violently rejects the mystical component, but offers Svetlana to plunge into a state of lucid sleep in order to understand herself and her fears. Thus, the main character and her three companions (all with skeletons in the closet and their own phobias) find themselves in a dream, which very quickly turns into a nightmare.
It would seem that a suspense is tied up in dreams - it has long been wearying of all the cliches. Immediately comes to mind a series of films with the good old Freddy Kruger or "Silent Hill" - there the dream is the starting point of the plot. There is also “Somniy” about the transformation of sleep into reality or the classic “Wolf Hour” by Ingmar Bergman. One way or another, a dream is often found in horror - as a revived nightmare, then as a way to immerse the viewer into anxiety and show the fears that have befallen the characters.
- Shot from the film "Breaking Dawn"
- © kinopoisk.ru
Despite this, “Dawn” managed to find quite a lively plot of the story - a demonstration of the danger of the practice of lucid dreams. We are offered to think: is the screen nightmare so far from reality, if somnology exists as a legal branch of medicine, and lucid dreams are studied and discussed by authoritative scientific communities? Moreover, applied in experimental psychiatry. In a situation where the mystical rites have long been bored by the viewer, a mixture of science and sectarian horror stories can have unexpected success.
Visually, "Dawn" develops strictly within the framework of the genre. Screamers, harsh loud sounds, sudden monsters - all of this is here in abundance. Yes, and the plot does not mark time: over time, it becomes obvious that the creators of the picture was interested not only the running around from the demon living in dreams.
A lucid dream turns into a real threat to the psyche of everyone who the mad professor put on the couch in his institute, because on the other side of the wakefulness the heroes come their own personal demons. On the one hand, it captures (which of us have no hidden fears?), On the other hand, it distracts from the main storyline. Nevertheless, by the end of the audience can not wait to find out whether the evil deity will break into the human world and how its appearance is connected with the family of Svetlana.
However, we will not receive answers to these questions. Shedding light on part of the story, the filmmakers hold the trump card - a mysterious sect - and end the film with an obvious hint of a sequel. Thriller as if ends in the middle of a phrase in which the most interesting remains untold.
Severtsev and Litvinov admit that they threatened to create the kinovelennoy. The plans - the creation of the prequel "Dawn" about the same sect (it is conceived as an independent, associated with the first film, only some of the characters). And the sequel, according to the producers, is not far off.
Despite the fact that after viewing the picture, the audience still has a lot of questions, this circumstance gives it a certain zest. The evil that is not defeated to the end is not a new turn, but in this case it is a win-win: for some reason it is important for us how the fate of the people involved in this story will be.
Well, the main secret of “Dawn”, probably, lies in its natural surrealism. Do you watch a movie and think about it involuntarily - do they show you a dream or are you?