What Dreams May Come (4K UHD Review)
Director
Vincent WardRelease Date(s)
1998 (June 23, 2026)Studio(s)
Interscope Communcations/PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (Shout! Studios/Shout Select)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
“To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life...
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
To be or not to be, that is the question that far too many people have asked of themselves long before Hamlet ruminated on the subject, and sadly, too many continue to ask it to this very day. In Hamlet’s case, royal life in Denmark has become so unbearable that he wants to end it all, but he’s paralyzed into inaction by his anxiety over what may await him in the life to come—in other words, he fears the dreams that the sleep of death might bring. Nearly four centuries after Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, Richard Matheson contributed his own view of the afterlife in his 1978 novel What Dreams May Come. Yet while the title may have been inspired by Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, the book was written from a far more comforting perspective. Two decades after that, director Vincent Ward brought Matheson’s book to life for the screen, retaining the broad outline of his story but offering a radically different vision for how things work in practice. Ward’s dreams that come in the sleep of death were inspired by classical artists like Caspar David Friedrich, Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude Monet, and Gustave Doré, combining the old worlds of art and architecture with the new world of digital visual effects to offer a compelling vision that’s unlike anything else on film.
Matheson’s story revolved around Chris, a middle-aged screenwriter whose spirit roams restlessly after his body is killed in an automobile accident. At first, he tries to connect with his wife Ann, but that only causes her more distress. His long-lost cousin Albert appears and encourages him to move on so that she can move on, and Chris ends up in Summerland, an afterlife that takes its appearance from the imaginations of those who occupy it. There, he meets another guide as well, Leona, and is finally starting to acclimate himself when he discovers that Ann killed herself back on Earth. Suicides don’t go to Summerland, but rather to a personal hell of their own making, and against Albert’s advice, Chis journeys to the netherworld in order to try to bring her back—at the risk of his own tenuous grip on his new reality.
Ronald Bass wrote the screenplay for What Dreams May Come before Ward became involved with the project, making a few significant changes along the way. Chris (Robin Williams) is now a pediatrician, and the natures of Albert (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and Leona (Rosalind Chow) are radically different. Bass also added the figure of a tracker (Max Von Sydow) who guides the journey to Hell. But the most important change is that rather than having adult children, Chris and Annie’s teenage son Ian (Josh Paddock) and younger daughter Marie (Jessica Brooks Grant) were both killed in an accident years before Chris suffered the same fate, and their journeys through the afterlife have taken some circuitous turns before Chris joins them. That adds to the depth of despair felt by Annie, turning her own question of whether to be or not to be into a naked cry of pain.
Yet at Ward’s behest, Bass made one more change that provided the hook that the director needed to justify his vision of the afterlife. Instead of being a caterer, Annie (Annabella Sciorra) is now an artist, and it’s her paintings that form the basis for what Chris sees when he first reaches Summerland (although it’s never given that name in the film). His private heaven is a literal Painted World, filled with brush strokes, where he slips and slides on the still-wet paint. This change heightens the connection between Chris and Annie, making them still a part of each other’s existence even after their lives are over. That’s crucial, because What Dreams May Come was never about letting go anyway. Rather than being a parable about the processing of grief like Truly, Madly, Deeply, What Dreams May Come is a romantic fable about soulmates. Annie can’t let Chris go after already having failed to let go of their lost children, and Chris can’t let go of Annie even from the other side. And once she herself her quietus makes, Chris isn’t willing to let her suffer in her own personal hell, even if it costs him his very soul. The bond between them is too strong.
What Dreams May Come isn’t really about suicide per se, rather death, the afterlife, and soulmates in general, but it suffuses the whole story anyway. (Matheson’s decision to borrow his title from Shakespeare had consequences, because those who look too long into the “abyss of inwardness” of characters like Hamlet will always end up having that abyss look back into them.) Fortunately, Ward and Bass treat the subject sensitively, with Chris having to learn the hard lesson that as much as he may want to help Annie, his efforts usually do her more harm than good. He first came to that realization when Annie tried to kill herself after the death of their children and ended up institutionalized. It was only once he finally understood that she had to lift herself out of the depths of despair, and that he couldn’t do it for her, that she was able to do just that.
But as is often the case, her recovery was only temporary, and his own death sent her back over the edge again. While Chris journeys into Hell in order to try to bring her back, he has no illusions about his own ability to do so. It’s just that he knows she’s his soulmate, and if he fails to snap her out of her own personal Purgatory, he accepts the consequences and decides to remain by her side. Even if the nepenthe of this underworld causes them to forget about each other, they’ll still be together, one way or the other. The radiant Annabella Sciorra delivers an Oscar-caliber performance as Annie, making both her joy during their early lives together and her sorrow at the hand later dealt by fate equally palpable. Yet for reasons that no one involved could possibly have anticipated, What Dreams May Come hits even harder today than it possibly could have in 1999.
There’s simply no way to discuss What Dreams May Come anymore without addressing the death of Robin Williams. Like many comedians, the man who made a name for himself by providing laughter for family, friends, and millions of fans was doing so partly as a way to hide some very real pain of his own. Unsurprisingly, he turned to addiction in order to ameliorate that pain, and struggled with it for most of his life. Chris tries to be a rock for Annie, but the actor who played him was standing on sinking sand. Ultimately, all of his personal issues combined with declining health proved to be too much for him to bear, and he took his own life on August 11, 2014, barely fifteen years after having addressed the subject in What Dreams May Come. The fact that Chris and Annie were eternal soulmates offers the hope for a better future, but there was no such happy ending for Williams. Rather than bear the ills we have, he chose to fly to others that we know not of. Hopefully, he finally found peace in his own version of a Painted World.
Cinematographer Eduardo Serra shot What Dreams May Come on 35mm film (in Super-35 format) using Panavision Platinum and Gold II cameras with spherical Primo prime and zoom lenses. While there’s an abundance of digital visual effects work in the film, post-production work was completely photochemically (this was shortly before the beginning of the era of full Digital Intermediates), with release prints being anamorphic blowups framed at 2.39:1. While there’s some misinformation online claiming that the negative was destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire (never with any attribution for that claim), this version is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, digitally remastered and graded for High Dynamic Range in Dolby Vision and HDR10—and the results leave little doubt that’s true. To cut to the chase, this is a fantastic 4K upgrade for What Dreams May Come.
To begin with, the image is nearly spotless, and while optical work like the opening titles and most of the effects shots display some expected softness, all of the fully live action material is crisp, clear, and perfectly resolved. There are fewer effects shots than you might think, too, so the pristine negative footage is a sizeable portion of the film. (There are a handful of effects shots like closeups of Williams in the painted world that actually look like negative footage, too, so it’s possible that some effects were recomposited for this version.) The fine layer of grain looks natural, and while it’s not perfectly even, that’s because of the variety of stocks that Serra used. As he told American Cinematographer in 1998, “The basic idea was to use the Fuji—which has a certain glamor to it, especially on women—for scenes set in Paradise and the happier flashback scenes, where I also pulled the stock one stop to make the scenes softer, and then use Kodak stocks for drama and effect.” He broke it down this way:
- Fuji F-500 (Super F-Series 8571) was used for scenes that wouldn’t involve any visual effects
- Kodak EXR 5298 was used for Hell and darker effects scenes
- Kodak Vision 200T 5277 was used for effects scenes that otherwise would have used the Fuji
All of that is replicated perfectly via the gorgeous color grading for this version. The colorist(s) resisted the temptation to dial up the HDR grades and make everything appear unnaturally vivid. Instead, they leaned into the breadth offered by the Wide Color Gamut rather than the extreme depths of dynamic range. It’s all about the subtle variations, like the different shades of green at the institution between Annie’s robe, the grass, and the trees, or the different shades of blue on the shirts in another one of Chris and Annie’s flashbacks. The colors look natural in the real world and heightened in the Painted World, but never exaggerated. The contrast range also allows the blacks to be deep and the flames of Hell to glow brightly, but always in a way that never strays too far outside the bounds of what the film medium can offer. If you think that films from that era that rely so heavily on digital effects can’t possibly look natural and filmic, you’re in for a surprise here. It’s a gorgeously filmic 4K rendition of What Dreams May Come.
Audio is offered in English 5.1 and 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. What Dreams May Come was released theatrically in 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS, plus 8-track SDDS, so while the 2.0 track may be the theatrical surround-encoded backup track for theatres that weren’t yet equipped for digital, it can safely be ignored in favor of the 5.1. This has always been a great mix, quiet and peaceful when it should be, but ominous and frightening when appropriate. It’s fully immersive, too, surrounding the viewer with rain, flying birds, underwater bubbles, and the crumbling environment of Annie’s hell. There’s plenty of deep bass as well, especially from the thunder and the crashing of the waves on the stormy seas. Ennio Morricone was hired to write the score for What Dreams May Come, but his efforts were rejected(!), so Michael Kamen stepped in at the last minute to do a new one. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t stray far from what he had done previously, and between the presence of Robin Williams and the Doré-inspired visuals, it sometimes strays a bit too close to The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but it still works well enough.
The Shout! Studios 4K Ultra HD release of What Dreams May Come is #214 in their Shout Select line, and it’s a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. It also includes a slipcover that duplicates the theatrical poster artwork on the insert. The following archival extras are included, all of them upscaled from their original standard definition sources:
DISC ONE: UHD
- Commentary by Vincent Ward
DISC TWO: BD
- Commentary by Vincent Ward
- Alternate Ending (6:34)
- What Dreams May Come Featurette (15:17)
- Interview with Joel Hynek (2:55)
- Interview with Josh Rosen (1:51)
- Trailers (4:51, 2 in all)
The extras are ported over from the previous Blu-ray and DVD releases of What Dreams May Come. Ward’s commentary does have a fair quantity of gaps in it, but he was otherwise well-prepared before he sat down to record it. He states up front that he’s going to talk about the technical details, the acting, the relationships, and the philosophy of the film, and that pretty much sums it up. He does discuss some external factors like the development of the script and the various changes that were made from the book, but he goes into far greater detail regarding the design of the film and the effects, and also gives his thoughts about the thematic core of Matheson’s story as reworked for the screen. It’s not an exciting commentary and it may take some patience to get through, but it’s rewarding for those who take the time to do so.
The Alternate Ending is a bit more akin to the ending of Matheson’s novel, fleshing out some details about rebirth that are omitted from the theatrical cut, and promising a somewhat different (and more bittersweet) experience for Chris and Annie after they return to Earth.
The What Dreams May Come Featurette is a pretty paint-by numbers (natch) EPK featurette that includes interviews with Vincent Ward, Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra, Richard Matheson, and more. It’s not particularly illuminating, but it’s still worth watching just to see all of the participants still young, vibrant, and very much alive.
There are also two more archival interviews. The first is with visual effects supervisor Joel Hynek, who offers a very brief description of how the effects were designed, relying on a 2.5D solution rather than full 3D digital rendering. The second is with art director Josh Rosen, who gives an even briefer overview of the design of the Painted World.
Aside from a couple of trailers, that’s it. What Dreams May Come certainly deserves a deeper dive into its groundbreaking effects work and design philosophy, but frankly, it’s wonderful enough that it’s been resurrected in 4K at all, and at such a high standard of quality to boot. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get, and I’m just grateful to finally have What Dreams May Come in 4K. Highly recommended.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).