There’s days so heavy that we can’t wait to get to sleep. Drift off into that sweet, sweet slumber. But just how trapped can we be in a dream and just how safe are we when they decide to manifest? I got to sit down with writer/director Racheal Cain on how the concept and film started as a dream but became very real in the coolest ways.

Mo Moshaty: SOMNIUM delves into the manipulation of dreams to alter reality. What inspired you to explore the concept of controlling dreams, and how did you develop this idea into the central theme of your film?

Racheal Cain: I was always skeptically curious about the law of attraction as a kid, watching my parents build their business while burning through their copy of ‘The Secret’ book on tape. I remember the first time I played an affirmational audio track for myself and found something so eerie about it. I wholeheartedly believe the LOA can work, but is it not a bit unsettling, to mentally place yourself somewhere outside of your circumstances and exist there until it becomes real around you? I think the first seed for SOMNIUM came from questioning ‘what if this stuff worked but to someone’s detriment?’.

I think the creepiness of that first affirmational track and this idea of‘how can we know what’s truly best for us?’ or which life experience will make us most fulfilled, before actually living that experience, was what I wanted to explore most. I also knew that, ultimately, I wanted the central theme of the film to always be get out of your head and into the present moment because fear can’t exist in the present. At that point in my scriptwriting process, I had already developed the main character’s flashbacks throughline and so I knew I wanted to juxtapose that past storyline with something which would pull her toward the future. That’s when the
idea for Somnium, the clinic, and its dream-producing procedures was born.

MM: Gemma’s emotional journey is intricately tied to her experiences at Somnium and her pursuit of Hollywood dreams. How did you approach balancing the psychological horror elements with her personal narrative of ambition and heartbreak?

RC: Much like that affirmational track, I wanted to nest that eeriness under the entire storyline. In LA, there’s a quiet hum of anxiety, of wanting to be somewhere you’re not, and I wanted the audience to feel it pretty consistently. As far as her personal narrative, I think our main character’s drive to get to the future was fueled by an unhealthy desire to escape the heartbreak of her past without fully facing it. Her fear materializes when she’s trailed by a lurking entity and so I used that entity as an instrument to dial the anxiety up and down when needed. In the script, (without totally giving away what the creature means to me) there’s always an internal,
character-driven reason for when and where it appears. So I think that emotional link helped the horror elements feel naturally connected to the other storylines. And then, of course, a lot of the balancing of elements came later too, in post, using sound and
music to tie things together.

MM: The film’s production design, which you were also heavily involved in, plays a significant role in creating the unsettling atmosphere of Somnium. Can you share how you conceptualized and executed the visual design to enhance the film’s eerie and dreamlike quality?

RC: One of our unique challenges with this film is that all of the main character’s flashbacks were shot long before the present day LA scenes. Back in 2018, when we filmed the flashbacks, I designed the sets out of necessity but I knew I’d want a designer when we picked back up for the present day shoot. I’m a huge fan of mood boarding and so I first made mood boards for both my Cinematographer, Lance Kuhns, and Production Designer, Olivia McManus. On the design boards, I included screengrabs from films which I drew visual inspiration from (NIGHTCRAWLER, IT FOLLOWS, ETERNAL SUNSHINE), alongside other images and textures, and then sprinkled in some stills from our flashbacks shoot, to ensure the flow included what we had already shot.

At that point I had worked in the industry for a few years as a designer myself and I know, personally, I thrive most with a lot of creative freedom. So, as soon as we had hired Olivia, I gave her the boards and kind of just cut her loose to work her magic. (She’s also insanely talented so that helped in trusting to hand it over completely.) I only had two hard visual rules to evoke a sense of dreaminess: one was ‘no red’ (I feel red is such a grounding color and I wanted to lean into a more weightless palette of blues and pinks) and two was that I wanted the set dec to evoke a sense of timelessness. The film is set in present day but I always wanted it to feel slightly off-center, as though maybe it takes place in a time vacuum or a version of reality one degree off from ours. With that in mind, there was a lot of attention to detail regarding color, as well as which props (phones, laptops, televisions etc.) and set dec to use.

For example, I had stumbled across a soda machine at a prop shop which felt very inherently 90s but something you’d totally see in a present day doctor’s office or bowling alley. I became weirdly obsessed with that soda machine and making sure it was available
to rent on our shoot days. I think Olivia and I are both slightly OCD with details like that and so we ended up working really well together. Olivia first came back to me with full 3D renders for the main sets – Gemma’s apartment, the Somnium clinic rooms and the Somnium office- and then we worked, back and forth, on a shared document to hone in on what colors, textures, pieces of furniture, etc. worked best. Even down to which pattern of wallpaper to use in each room in her apartment, a lot of consideration went into those details and the feelings those colors and textures would evoke.

MM: Cloud 9 is a particularly chilling concept within the film’s narrative. What was your intention behind introducing this irreversible procedure, and how does it tie into the broader message of the dangers of pursuing dreams at any cost?

RC: In 2018, in the midst of writing the script, I did ayahuasca at a spiritual retreat. The experience was a complete software update in the course of one evening and left me deeply changed to this day. On a surface level, Cloud 9 functioned initially as a narrative tool to raise the stakes and get these characters to a place where returning the same was no longer an option. But I think it was born from this personal experience and ties into this greater theme of the dangers of desire and, in the case of SOMNIUM, toying with the fabric of reality. The dangers of ‘what if the thing I thought would make me happy ultimately makes me worse off than where I
started?’, which can be seen so often in Hollywood. It’s good to have dreams and aspirations, of course. But ultimately, I think we have to first be at peace with where we are when we’re setting out, lest we enter this never-ending hall of mirrors. It’s something I’m still learning, personally, and I think ties back into the overall theme of getting out of our heads and into the present.

MM: How did you work with Chloë to capture the complexity of Gemma’s character, and what qualities did you see in her that made her the perfect fit for this role?

RC: Chloë came to me as a suggestion from my NYC casting director, Bess Fifer. I had seen her in The OA and was mesmerized by her performance in THE TRANSFIGURATION. It’s interesting when you’re casting someone to play a version of yourself. I obviously saw parts of myself in her but it was more just a feeling I had of a boundlessness to the depths she could go, in any direction. I sensed no barriers to where she could navigate, performance-wise (which absolutely proved to be the case).

Music was a key tool we used in communicating how a scene or sequence should feel. I made her playlists for the flashbacks and LA scenes and she ended up making her own playlists of songs she felt Gemma would listen to. There were also fun moments where, because we had filmed the flashbacks years prior, I was able to play her back those edited scenes, on camera, while filming her reminiscing about them.

Other than that, all credit goes to Chloë. Not only is she astoundingly talented but she’s incredibly hard-working and comes to set every day so prepared. As a tiny example, we had worked with a dialect coach on a subtle Southern accent for the flashbacks scenes and then chose to slowly have them wane, the longer she spent in Los Angeles and her character had time to change. For every scene, she came prepared with the perfect slightly-different degree of Southern accent. It blew me away.

I think her incredible performance that everyone is talking about is equal parts her dedication to preparation but then her fearless willingness to throw it away and leap into the unknown in the moment. I was so lucky to have her.

SOMNIUM WILL BE SHOWING AT THE BROOKLYN HORROR FILM FESTIVAL IN OCTOBER!!

About SOMNIUM:
Somnium has won 2024 Winner Best American Feature Film at Female Eye Film Festival, The Audience Award at Chattanooga Film Festival, 2015 Winner First Place Suspense/Thriller Competition at Los Angeles Screenplay Contest.
Written and Directed by Racheal Cain, Produced by Maria Allred, Chris Raby, Racheal Cain, Ali Mahir Aksu, Patricia Chica