Nicolas Cage stars as Paul Matthews, a listless family man and tenured professor with an affinity for evolutionary biology and anxiety regarding his own anonymity.

One day, he discovers he has begun to appear in other people’s dreams at an exponential rate. As in life, his presence in these dreams is banal and non-intrusive, he is just there, staring indifferently at the fantasies and nightmares of strangers. Nonetheless, he becomes an overnight celebrity, and is soon showered with the attention he has long been denied. But when Paul encounters a dreamer whose visions of him differ substantially from the norm, he finds himself grappling with the Faustian bargain of fame as his dream-selves start inexplicably becoming violent within their respective subconsciousnesses. Becoming an overnight sensation, he is catapulted to fame before his dream scenario becomes a nightmare and his admirers turn against him.

Cage is brilliant as the underappreciated Matthews, and outright terrifying as some of his manifestations, which feature an iconic intensity, seen in his recent films such as Pig and Mandy (incidentally shot by this film’s cinematographer Ben Loeb). Buoyed by a terrific cast that features Julianne Nicholson and Michael Cera, this hilarious satire-cum–social horror affirms writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself) as an astute critic of influencer culture and societal groupthink.

Nicolas Cage, who has been acting for almost 45 years, and has appeared in more than 100 films, said that Dream Scenario is one of five scripts he’s encountered over the course of his career that he knew, immediately upon reading, he had to take on. (The others were Raising Arizona, Vampire’s Kiss, Leaving Las Vegas and Adaptation). He should receive an Academy Award nomination for his lead performance in this unsettling and disturbing absurdist comedy.