DreamQuil

These are overwhelming times, and disappointment is everywhere. Wouldn’t it be nice to just get away from it all with a nifty procedure and an automated assistant to take care of things? Tempting as the fantasy sounds, Alex Prager’s sci-fi drama DreamQuil offers a counterpoint: how much humanity will we stand to lose in the pursuit of happiness? The more we give up our responsibilities and human messiness to A.I., the more we risk losing the very connections that mean the most to us. 
In Alex Prager’s feature debut, Carol (Elizabeth Banks) is stuck indoors with her doting husband (John C. Riley) and son as the air quality has made it difficult to go outside. After a recommendation from a girlfriend, Carol opts for the DreamQuil treatment,  which offers a week of relaxation and an A.I. personal assistant to take care of household responsibilities. When Carol returns home, she discovers the assistant is modeled after her likeness and that her family now seems to prefer “Carol Two.”
As A.I. has become an increasing part of everyday life, the fears of sci-fi writers and filmmakers have felt ever closer to home. DreamQuil follows in the footsteps of movies like Her, Ex Machina, and M3GAN, exploring how intimate relationships with (mostly femme-presenting) artificial entities affect organic characters. Combining the sci-fi elements with dramatic influences from filmmakers like Douglas Sirk, Prager took on the challenge of making her first film with an ambitious vision of both the past and the future. 
DreamQuil premiered at SXSW on March 16.
Filmmaker: When you last spoke with Filmmaker for the 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2023, you were just starting work on DreamQuil. How did it feel to complete your feature debut?  
Prager: It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s amazing because I feel like I have 25 years of film experience now after doing one movie. I wrote the film with my sister, and I produced the film along with Brownstone, Arts and Sciences, and Patriot and Republic Pictures. Everything that I’ve done so far in my art career has been leading to this moment. I was learning as I went because I had never done it before, so that was inevitable. I also knew exactly what I wanted every step of the way. Having written the story—and constantly editing it on set because the days were too ambitious—I had to rewrite almost every single day to really get rid of all the unnecessary bits. It’s definitely going to inform my next movie that I’m already in pre-production on because I just learned so much about working with actors and finding out what they need. 
Filmmaker: How did you develop the idea for a sentient A.I. character that inserts itself in a family’s life? 

Prager: My sister and I wrote it deep in the pandemic, at the stage when everyone was being told not to hang out with each other in person. My entire existence is collaborating with other people and my career depends on it. My sister and I had already written one script that hadn’t been made yet. I sent my sister this meme that I saw. It was a joke about what if you could just go to sleep and wake up a year later when the pandemic is over.
My sister said, “Oh, what if this could be a starting point for writing a short story together?” We’re both career moms and have really solid family lives, so we’re used to juggling all of that. It’s never easy and with the added idea of this digital technology and automation affecting our lives—just slowly realizing we’re more and more distracted in our home and work lives, and the more connected we’re supposed to be because of technology, we’re actually becoming more and more disconnected as a society. We first approached DreamQuil as a way to tell a story about second chances in kind of an ironic way.
Filmmaker: You come from a photography background, and that’s evident in your use of color palettes, staging, and set design for DreamQuil. How did you approach the design element in your film?
Prager: That’s a hugely important thing. I think I read something Hitchcock said once about how you should be able to understand the story through visuals alone, without dialogue. I very much approach films that way. I got super lucky with my crew. I have [cinematographer] Lol Crowley, who during [the production of] DreamQuil won this Oscar, which was very exciting for him. He’s just a lovely guy and really willing to go deep into what my process has been as a photographer. I’ve always worked with hot lights from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I love all of those old-school techniques. I love the heat that the Richardson lights give because it does affect the actors. It creates a very intimate kind of sultry environment that you don’t get from these really clean HMIs. We also used these Baltar lenses that Lol went deep to find that Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk used. 
Filmmaker: Speaking of techniques, you use surrealism to enhance the film’s over-the-top visual language. How did you create this new kind of reality in the film’s world?
Prager: Annie Buschamp found the Marin County Civic Center, which was the last building Frank Lloyd Wright ever built. There’s this theory that Frank Lloyd Wright was abducted by aliens at the end of his career, and when he was returned to earth, he built this space because it really feels like it’s from another planet, like in a parallel universe, and it doesn’t feel like a typical Frank Lloyd Wright. Annie was just amazing at finding that location and building the apartment. I’ve always touched upon surrealism in my photography and my short films. I think it’s a really important part of the human psyche, because it shows another plane that we’re all living in, thinking in, and dreaming in, and that’s just as valid as what’s tangible.
Filmmaker: Elizabeth Banks plays not just the lead, but also the film’s A.I. villain and a producer behind-the-scenes. What was it like to collaborate with her on your first film? 

Prager: She is such a powerhouse. I was constantly impressed with her on set. She didn’t even want to rehearse Carol with me. She was just like, “No, I got it.” And then the first day we shot it, I was just like, “Wow, you really do got it.” To be honest, when we wrote the short story, we wrote it with Elizabeth in mind to play Carol, and she was the only person we ever gave the short story to. The moment she read it, she wrote back immediately and said she wanted to play Carol. I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the Carols. There was something about Elizabeth that just made perfect sense that she would understand this role and totally smash it, which she did. I think of her kind of like an old Hollywood mogul in a way, because she’s doing everything in film.
Filmmaker: There is so much going on in this film when it comes to humanity and our over-reliance on A.I. What do you want audiences to think about when watching DreamQuil?
Prager: I want people to have fun and laugh and just go on the ride—because it is a wild ride. It’d be nice if the conversations afterwards got them to reflect on their own humanity and their own responsibility in what’s happening. The future is unwritten as of now, and although the tech companies—who are very indifferent to us—will say that this is happening and you have no say in it and it’s just inevitable, it hasn’t happened yet. Just because they put billions of dollars into it doesn’t mean that it’s a locked future, because nothing is certain.