Dream Eater

★★★☆

Dir: Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams

Released October 24th, 2025

Runtime: 90 minutes

Found footage has become a staple in horror filmmaking for one very good reason: it’s a lot cheaper to make a film that looks like it’s assembled from footage put together on cheap cameras by amateurs. The actual shooting costs of The Blair Witch Project (1999) were around $60,000; even after post-production work and marketing the cost was under a million. Dream Eater, whose conceit is closer to Paranormal Activity than it is to Blair Witch, was made for around $100,000. It looks like it cost a bit more, though, due to the filmmakers decent grasp on shoot quality on the cheap. The setup requires it to be like that, though; Mallory (Mallory Drumm) is a documentary filmmaker and even though Alex (Alex Lee Williams) gripes about how her last doc cost more than it made, he also later in the film points out that her camera cost $6,000. A certain level of film quality is necessary.

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