Bad Dreams

This well-crafted and promising directorial debut from recent NYU film school graduate Fleming concentrates more on mood than on gore. BAD DREAMS begins in the early 1970s, as the leader of a Jim Jones-ian religious cult (Lynch) ceremonially douses his followers with gasoline and then sets them and himself aflame. Twenty-seven men, women, and children die in the horrible fire, but there is one survivor, a 13-year-old girl who escapes the inferno but sinks into a coma. Fifteen years later, the girl (Rubin) awakens and is placed in a group-therapy session geared to the suicidal. Soon she begins having visions of the charred cult leader, who urges her to kill herself ...