Film

What Dreams May Come

Name: What Dreams May Come
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Released: 1998
Cast: Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra, Max von Sydow, Jessica Brooks Grant

Robin Williams explores grief, love, and the afterlife in this visually audacious 1998 fantasy-drama. Chris Nielsen navigates a heavenly realm shaped by imagination itself, then descends into darkness to rescue his wife. It's painterly, sincere, and emotionally ambitious—a film about whether love survives death, designed to hit you where it matters most.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a grieving love story told with lush, painterly imagery and you're happy to let sentiment run full tilt, because it treats heaven and bereavement as places worth lingering in.

Skip it if you find the Hollywood afterlife too sugary to take seriously, or you want something light and quick; its earnest, heavy emotion rarely lets up across its running time.

What it asks of you: Just under two hours of slow, mournful stretches where the visuals carry much of the weight, and the grief lands hard and lingers.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Always1989

Spielberg's own meditation on love beyond loss, where a pilot returns after death to guide the living. It shares What Dreams May Come's belief that devotion transcends the boundary between worlds, told with genuine tenderness.

But Slower and more diffuse than you'd expect from Spielberg; the magical realism can feel sentimental rather than earned.

Ghost1990

Patrick Swayze trapped between worlds, clawing toward Demi Moore across the veil of death. Same core question—can love reach across that gulf?—executed with better pacing and a lighter touch that lets the emotion breathe.

But Owes so much to its central pottery scene that nothing else quite matches it. Hasn't aged as gracefully as its earnestness deserves.

Defending Your Life1991

Albert Brooks' afterlife is funny and smart, not serene. A man must defend his life choices in court while falling for Meryl Streep; it asks if heaven is about judgment or second chances with the same philosophical bite, lighter touch.

But The bureaucratic comedy tone won't work for you if you want What Dreams May Come's full emotional weight. It's clever when you want devastating.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from What Dreams May Come

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Wings of Desire1987

Both films use the afterlife as a lens to examine what makes life worth living, treating death not as an ending but as a perspective from which to love the living world harder. Where What Dreams May Come visualizes heaven, Wings of Desire imagines the longing to be mortal.

Wim Wenders' angels watching Berlin, drawn to human experience they cannot fully live. It's the meditation on death, beauty, and what we lose when we leave the world that What Dreams May Come couldn't quite reach—more poetry than plot, devastatingly human.

But Glacially paced, German cinema from the Cold War era; subtitles and metaphor over narrative thrust will test your patience. Its rewards are quiet, not immediate.

The Lovely Bones2009

Peter Jackson visualizes a girl's heaven as dreamlike and personal, full of landscapes shaped by her own desires. It's what What Dreams May Come reached for—a heaven that's interior, intimate, surreal—with greater visual control.

But Saoirse Ronan's performance is ethereal but distant. The film struggles to balance its spiritual ambition with narrative momentum, and it shows.

City of Angels1998

Nicolas Cage as an angel who gives up immortality for mortal love with Meg Ryan. It's the same year as What Dreams May Come and asks identical questions about whether the transcendent can choose the human, with lush cinematography.

But Relies heavily on voiceover that can feel arch. The romance is earnest in ways that veer close to treacle, and the film knows it.

The Fountain2006

Darren Aronofsky's three-timeline epic about love and loss across centuries, each gorgeously realized. Like What Dreams May Come, it treats the afterlife and imagination as inseparable, with commitment to visual poetry that borders on obsessive.

But Deliberately cryptic and demanding. The film asks you to feel rather than understand, and some viewers find that frustrating rather than moving.

A Matter of Life and Death1946

A British airman given a second chance at life by heaven itself; Powell and Pressburger's colour sequences for the afterlife are painterly and strange. It's the spiritual grandparent of What Dreams May Come, done with wit and real strangeness.

But Its logic is dream-logic; you won't follow the rules of the afterlife rationally. Black-and-white Earth versus technicolour heaven feels quaint now.

Stardust2007

Neil Gaiman's fairy tale with a vast, imaginative universe that shifts according to magic and desire. It has What Dreams May Come's faith in worlds shaped by will and hope, but trades grief for adventure and romance.

But Tonal shifts between whimsy and darkness can feel uneven. The plot meanders, and some of the charm depends on an earnestness that doesn't work for everyone.

The Poseidon Adventure1972

A disaster film with a spiritual undertone: survivors swim upward through an inverted ocean liner toward light and salvation. It's pure spectacle without What Dreams May Come's psychology, but shares the journey through hostile terrain toward transcendence.

But The human drama is thin; you're mostly here for the shipwreck sequences. Dated special effects and perfunctory character arcs feel thin even by 1972 standards.

Annihilation2018

Both films stage their central question—what happens when we cross a threshold we can't return from?—as a descent into a world shaped by the protagonist's inner life. The architecture of the world reflects the architecture of the mind.

Scientists descend into a luminescent, impossible landscape where the laws of physics warp and reality reshapes itself. Like What Dreams May Come, it visualizes an interior psychological space as an external world—grief and trauma made visible, gorgeous and terrifying.

But Science fiction rather than fantasy or drama; the end-game is cosmic horror, not transcendence. If you want reassurance about the afterlife, this offers none.

A Ghost Story2017

Both films argue that love can trap us as much as save us, and that the afterlife might be less about transcendence than about being unable to let go. What Dreams May Come finds paradise in clinging to connection; A Ghost Story finds horror in the same impulse.

A man returns as a ghost, watching centuries pass in the house he loved, unable to move forward. Minimal, strange, devastating—it asks what it means to be trapped by the places and people you've loved, with the patience of eternity.

But Experimental and oblique; shot in an unusual aspect ratio, paced like a poem, not a narrative. It witholds emotional satisfaction deliberately and won't work if you need conventional catharsis.