When writer-director Alex Woo began developing “In Your Dreams,” an animated adventure about two siblings who journey through the landscape of their own subconscious, he wasn’t trying to make another film about “believing in yourself.” He was doing the opposite.
“I really made this film because I feel like there’s so much pressure on people and kids to live these perfect lives and to make their dreams come true,” the Emmy-winning animator and filmmaker told The Christian Post.
“Especially in American culture, there’s this idea that you should always pursue your dreams in full force, no matter what. But if that becomes too important, it can turn dark. It can almost become an idol.”
“In Your Dreams,” rated PG and now streaming on Netflix, is a story about how pain and fear can become one’s best teachers, a lesson that feels strikingly biblical, even if the film never mentions faith directly.
Woo’s film follows Stevie (Jolie Hoang-Rappaport), a tightly wound perfectionist, and her younger brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), a chaotic optimist. When they tumble into the dream world, they must survive a sarcastic stuffed giraffe, zombie breakfast foods and the Queen of Nightmares, Nightmara, who tells them something unexpected: “Nightmares make us strong enough to face the unknown.”
That line, Woo said, encapsulates his critique of what he calls “the Westernized version of success,” one that celebrates endless ambition but leaves little room for failure or pain.
“Ambition is healthy,” he explained, “but if it becomes everything, it can swallow you. The moments I’ve grown the most, or when my relationships have deepened the most, weren’t during perfect times; they were in my darkest ones, when I felt like I was living a literal nightmare.”
It’s a sentiment that echoes the Christian paradox that strength often comes through weakness. “Suffering produces perseverance,” Paul writes in Romans 5, “perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
In another scene, Nightmara, the movie’s embodiment of fear, offers the reminder that in order to get through chaos, one must hold onto something that is constant and has always been there. For Christian viewers, there is a deeper parallel: the biblical idea of God is the one unchanging presence in a world defined by uncertainty.
“The only constant in life is change,” Woo reflected. “But the other constant, the one that matters, is love. Love from your family, your friends, the people who stick with you. That’s what helps you survive the change.”
For Woo, that truth is personal. He’s spoken before about waking up as a child to find his mother leaving home for a time, a moment that both rocked his sense of safety but also shaped his storytelling.
“I hope people walk away with that,” he said. “That love, real love, not perfect love, is what gets you through.”
During “In Your Dreams,” that conviction takes the form of the siblings’ evolving relationship. Stevie begins the film believing she can “fix” her family if she just finds the Sandman, a mystical being who can make wishes come true. By the end, she realizes the healing she wanted was already within reach, in the messy love she shares with her little brother Elliot.
Visually, the movie is stunning, with dazzling dreamscapes filled with chaos and color (though the nightmare scenes may be frightening for younger viewers). Woo, who spent years at Pixar before founding Kuku Studios, explained that even the colorful landscapes are rooted in real emotion.
“Every dream world comes from something the kids experienced in real life,” he said. “That’s kind of how dreams are for me, bits of the day reassembled at night.”
He pointed to the film’s most absurd sequence, a breakfast world teeming with talking pancakes and zombie sausages, as an example.
“That came from Stevie’s memory of family breakfasts,” Woo explained. “Food connects us to emotion, to home. French toast was family for me as a kid. So when her dream turns that memory into chaos, it’s really about her realizing that even the good things can feel scary when you’re afraid of change.”
Woo said that through his film, he wants both children and adults alike to understand that laughter and lament, order and disorder can coexist, and that messiness and imperfection is what builds resilience. Nightmares, he emphasized, can serve as reminders to grow and wake up to what truly matters.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials,” James writes, “because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
“There’s so much pressure on kids today,” he said. “Social media makes everyone’s life look flawless. And when your own life doesn’t match up, you feel like something’s wrong with you … I wanted to make something that tells kids it’s OK if your life isn’t perfect. That doesn’t mean you’re broken, it means you’re real.”
“In Your Dreams” is now streaming on Netflix.
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
