Happy Dream Day

Happy Dream Day is a psychological horror short film following the journey of Dolores, a 16 year old girl who is lured into attending a birthday party hosted by a group of high-society occultists. She tries to retain her soul as she comes face to face with a primal evil in the form of her father and the group's leader, The Peacock King.

Luka Tomić is a Serbian writer and director whose work focuses on wider societal issues. While his films range in genre from extreme horror to satire, they all retain his critical outlook on modern society. His most notable works are his environmentalist short film A Taste of Strawberry (2022), a web series critical of hyperconsumerism and tech-obsession, Dream Cabal (2023-ongoing), and a feature film centred around abuse stemming from misinterpretations of a religious text, The Book of Vesna (2023).

When one is asked to describe Chai Ruakere-Forbes, the answer is seldom simple. A filmmaker, yes but more accurately, a saboteur of consensus reality. Born in Taranaki and now operating out of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Chai is a Māori/NZ European artist whose work tunnels through the gloss of modern life to expose what festers underneath.

Cameron Alers is a Kiwi-born producer who's worked on a large range of student projects over his life in pursuit of a love for storytelling. His work includes many past roles in Dream Cabal (2023-ongoing), both as cast and crew. This film marks his first branch away from the comedy genre.

In addition to that, we are supported by a large and talented crew, including:

Akash Saravanan as Assistant Director

Oliver Roozen as Gaffer

Nicholas Etchells and Timoti as Lighting Assistants

Arlo Andrews as 1st Assistant Camera

Jackson Borella as 2nd Assistant Camera

Charlie Daly as our Sound Recordist

Ethan Thomas as DIT

Teal Rogers, Atlas Murray and Shannon Knight in Art Department

Most of our budget will be going towards our cast and crew and ensuring that they are comfortable on set. Money raised will be going towards:

• The cast
• Food for the cast and crew
• Transport of both film gear and the cast/crew
• An intimacy coordinator
• Art department and production design

Happy Dream Day will be presented as a fable, acquiring a surreal tone as the audience follows the events of the birthday party through the perspective of a child stuck in an unfamiliar situation. The endless hallways of the abandoned manor Dolores has to traverse and the elaborate costumes worn by the occult circle that trapped her there become distorted, as otherwordly to the audience as they appear to Dolores in that moment. Time and space lose their meaning, with Dolores' entire experience acquiring a mythical or religious tone.

While the premise of a girl stuck in a manor with a group of devil worshippers might seem simple, the team took great care in ensuring that each name, invocation, action and symbol in the film related to the Peacock King's circle mirrors the religious views of the real ruling class. Drawing from the writings of Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, the ancient Yazidis, Sumerian religious texts and medieval German occultism, Happy Dream Day is packed with religious symbolism matching the decadence and debauchery of our world's rich and powerful.

Our goal is embedding great subtextual meaning into a film that is simple on the surface, allowing anyone to follow Dolores' journey and understand the values our story is putting forth, while letting a dedicated few analyze the religious symbolism present throughout to get to the nuances of what Happy Dream Day is trying to say about our society and the people in control of it.

At its core, Happy Dream Day is a story about ritual abuse inflicted on the populace by those in power.

On the literal level, Dolores has spent her whole life being unknowingly prepared to become a ritual sacrifice for her affluent father's occult circle. We follow her on her 16th birthday as the years of preparation conclude in her 'birthday party' in an abandoned manor, where she gradually awakens to the implications of the surprise party her father has organized for her. Her only hope for overcoming the grasp of The Peacock King and his circle of Nine becomes the purity of her soul, with her refusal to participate in the ritual and willingly become their prey leading to her her walking away unharmed.

This mirrors the ritual abuse all of us face by living in an industrial society, where the minds of the masses are freely corrupted and twisted by the ruling class. Media manipulation designed to incite fear, psychological and chemical warfare focused on creating a more docile populace, the early exposure to graphic violence and sexual content via the internet warping the lives of the youngest generations... All of these are metaphysically synonymous to the abuse Dolores faces in Happy Dream Day.

With most modern voices refusing to speak about some of the most important issues plaguing the present day, Happy Dream Day guides the audience into recognizing that they don't have to be complicit in their own abuse. As long as they refuse to let these evils in and retain the purity of their soul, they don't have to be at the mercy of any governments or megacorporations attempting to ruin them.