This article contains spoiler

It was a late night and my Big and I decided that we were going to watch a scary movie just for the heck of it. Whenever I watch scary movies I have to be prepared, the only way I'll watch it is if I have a blanket and a pillow to squeeze throughout the movie. Once I have those items I'm set for the couple hours of terror. We decided to watch the movie "Before I Wake" that came out in 2016. This movie is about a little boy who lost both his parents and was put into the adoption system.

He went through two foster parents before meeting this really nice couple who had just lost their son to a tragic drowning accident and wanted to help another child to help them move forward. The actor who played this little boy was the cutest kid I've ever seen in my entire life and he is such a good actor for being so young, he was literally 6 years old. Anyways back to my story. When the little boy went to his new foster parent's house, they soon realized that he has a gift. Whatever the boy dreams come true, for an example in one scene he dreams about butterflies, those are his favorite, and butterflies showed up downstairs in the living room in front of the parents. Even though his dreams can be a wonderful thing, they aren't the only thing that comes true.

When the little boy has nightmares they turn to reality. One of his recurring nightmares is of this creature he calls the "Canker Man." Whenever this scary figure comes to life he tells the little boy, " I will always be with you." The little boy knows what the Canker Man is capable of and even tries to take pills to stay awake so that he doesn't accidentally have a nightmare and make this evil character come to life and harm his family. Now, remember how earlier I said that this was his 3rd set of foster parents? That's because the boy's nightmarish figure came to life and well I think you can infer the rest from that, RIP to the other foster parents.

The Canker Man ends up coming to life eventually killing the little boy's foster dad. The boy was taken away and put into an orphanage until another family was to come and take him. Throughout all of this, the foster mother loved the little boy and wanted him to stay with her even though it was his uncontrollable nightmares that caused her husband to be killed. While the little boy was in the orphanage the foster mom searched through copious amounts of information trying to find out why he was born like this and what actually happened to his parents. This is where the plot changes.

The foster mom finds a diary written by the little boys biological mother while she was pregnant with him. It turns out that the little boy's nightmares didn't take away his mother, it was something much worse. His biological mother was diagnosed with cancer when he was three years old, he never knew how to pronounce cancer or knew what it was thus why he calls it "canker." The last time he saw his mom he was too young to really grasp what she looked like, cancer had taken over her body causing her to be bald and pale looking with deep-set eyes and a tired bony body, this last image of his mother is what his mind made the "Canker Man" look like.

The boy was too young to understand anything that was going on in his life and therefore his brain took over his reality and made it a fear. The message that the figure always said to the boy, " I will always be with you," was the last thing that his mother said to him before she died. His brain didn't know how to process it so it turned what once was an emotional moment into a horrific one in his small brain. Is your mind blown yet? Mine was. I was so amazed at how this whole plot just went from a scary movie to a sad one. It made me realize that children really don't have the ability to grasp subjects and situations like older people can just because they haven't been introduced to it yet.

If you ever find yourself in the mood to watch a scary movie I 100% recommend "Before I Wake," it has all the jump scares and crazy moments, but it also has a mind-blowing meaning behind it that I promise will leave you as speechless as I was.