I have to be honest, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this film! Like something out of the Twilight Zone, the Director takes us through a journey that keeps you on your toes from scene to scene. This is not a horror film or meant to be one... it's more of a Sci-fi thriller that takes you on the ride of your life. Smart, Creepy, suspenseful, but what I loved more than anything is that Writer/Director James Lay does not take the audience to be a bunch of mindless idiots. The only Sci-fi fan that would not enjoy this, would be one that just didn't understand the film.From the mood setting backdrops to the intellectual story telling, Dreamland is a must see!

A moody, three-quarter-sketched genre document somewhere between The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, The Mothman Prophecies and (surprisingly) a heartwarming Lifetime fictioner, writer-director James Lay's Dreamland is a spooky, open-ended, alien-tinged quasi-thriller that makes the most of its desolate landscapes. Shot in deep shades of blue by cinematographer Jonathan Hale, the movie is an old school, filmic exercise in the elongation of apprehension. When filmmaker Robert Rodriguez talked, in Rebel without a Crew, his tome about the making of El Mariachi, about making a list of one's assets, and then using those to help shape the narrative of a movie, he could very well have been talking about a movie like this, so spare and streamlined are its moves and payoffs.There's also an admirable, rewarding slow-play of details to match the low-key stakes of the story. if you can take character-rooted nuance in your sci-fi, there's some genuine enjoyment to be found here.

Dreamland started out moderately interesting but never went anywhere except Tedium city. A low rent affair with no name actors and laughable effects, not recommended for any reason. The best thing that could be said is it looks like they really filmed it on location in the Nevada desert. That's it, I can't think of one thing good besides that about this stinker. The finale is supposed to be some kind of revelation but falls flat like the rest. Oh, I thought of one other good point about this cheese, it clocks in at just over an hour although it still wears out its welcome long before then. When the girl starts walking around in the desert at night it seems to last forever and just keeps getting worse from there. The attempts at horror aren't effective in the least. The story is an attempt at a twilight zone style feel but fails badly. Check out "Retroactive" for a good science fiction B-movie.

The lives of Megan(Jackie Kresler)and Dylan(Shane Elliott)change in the Nevada desert between Reno and Las Vegas. They stop to eat at a small greasy spoon where they reluctantly learn about the infamous Area 51 by the café proprietor(Jonathan Breck). After getting back on the road in their forty year old Lincoln, the radio gets a little crazy broadcasting Hitler's speech at the 1836 Olympics and then later a 1958 news bulletin of Elvis Presley being drafted into the military. The car slowly breaks down and the two are in for the scare of their lives as mysterious unexplainable things happen in the lonely radiation-poisoned desert; remnants of nuclear testing. Megan meets a lost little girl(Channing Nichols)and a wounded WWII soldier. The nightmarish journey doesn't end there. Kresler is impressive to a degree and writer/director James Lay makes good use of Patsy Cline tunes. All in all, moderately interesting Sci-Fi.