Slumberland follows the adventures of Nemo, a young orphan, who sets out to find her dead father in a dream world called Slumberland, along with the help of her outlaw friend Flip.
Based on the comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay, Slumberland is a fantasy adventure film featuring Jason Momoa, Marlow Barkley, Kyle Chandler, Weruche Opia, and Chris O’Dowd in key roles. The film is directed by Francis Lawrence, known for Constantine.
Slumberland Story Summary
Nemo (Marlow Barkley) is a young girl who lives with her father Peter (Kyle Chandler), the caretaker of a lighthouse. Finding joy in each other’s company, the father-daughter duo makes the most of what they have. Nemo keeps asking her father Peter for the key to the lighthouse, but Peter keeps postponing the event by saying that Nemo needs to learn everything about the lighthouse before being eligible to enter it.
Although Nemo doesn’t get the key to the lighthouse from his father, she does get imaginative stories about the adventures Peter has undertaken with his outlaw friend Flip. While narrating an interesting story to Nemo about one of his and Flip’s adventures in which he faced a giant black monster at the bottom of the sea, Peter gets a warning alert on the phone regarding an impending storm.
Peter leaves Nemo alone at the house to go and take care of the urgent situation. With her toy Pig as a companion for the night, Nemo passes out to take a good night’s sleep. When she opens her eyes in the middle of the night, she finds her entire house freezing and full of snow.
The waves of the sea catch Nemo off guard when it swallows the lighthouse and takes Nemo with them. Stuck in a whirlpool and being taken to the abyss, Nemo notices her father swimming towards her. But before she could grab his hand, the black monster her father told her about comes from behind and sucks Peter in.
Luckily, the entire scenario turns out to be a bad dream. But Nemo realizes that it was not just a bad dream when Peter’s colleague, Carla, comes to inform her in the morning that her father is presumed dead after being lost in the sea.
After Peter’s death, Nemo’s custody passes to Peter’s estranged brother, Phillip (Chris O’Dowd), who runs a doorknob company. However, Phillip is not the best at taking care of a child. Luckily for Nemo, she has her friend Pig by her side.
To her amazement, on her first night at Uncle Phillip’s house, Nemo enters a magical dream world in which her stuffed toy Pig turns animated. Her magical bed takes her to the lighthouse where she used to live with her father. Trying to find Peter, Nemo comes across a stranger lurking in her house.
The man, dressed in glittery clothes and possessing beast-like teeth, introduces himself as Flip (Jason Momoa), Peter’s former partner. Flip questions Nemo about a map, with the image of a pearl in the back, that Peter had in his possession. Frustrated by Flip’s antics, Nemo asks him to leave and requests to meet his father.
Flip informs Nemo that she can see his father every day if she finds the map that could lead them to the magic which lets the bearer wish for anything in Slumberland. But when Nemo shares that she doesn’t know where the map is, Flip pushes Nemo out of the dream world called Slumberland.
The next day, Nemo goes to her new school, and later at home, Phillip tries to bond with her through some lock-picking, one of Phillip’s favorite hobbies. In the night, Pig leads her to the map which was among her own belongings.
Having found the map, Nemo decides it’s time for her to go find her father, and Nemo starts the preparations for the adventure. She uses Phillip’s mobile to mark herself absent from school and finding a secluded spot in the school itself, she readies herself to take a nap and enter Slumberland.
Slumberland Ending Explained
In Slumberland, Nemo finds herself at the lighthouse again where Flip snatches the map from her hand and begins to head for the treasure. But Flip refuses to take Nemo with him as it’s a dangerous journey through other people’s dreams. If someone dies in another person’s dream in Slumberland, that person dies for real as opposed to dying in one’s own dream, which wakes up the person. However, Nemo smartly uses the double knock, an outlaw code used by Flip and Peter, to force Flip into taking her with him.
What Does The Map Lead To?
Flip tells Nemo that the maps lead to every dream in Slumberland. Using the map, Flip and Peter used to enter other people’s dreams to fulfill their adventures. The map was stolen by the two from the Bureau of Subconscious Activities (BOSA), the authority responsible to decide who sees what dream. The map also contains the location of the Sea of Nightmares, where the magical pearls that give access to anything one wishes for in Slumberland are located.
Flip decides to enter recurring dreams of other people through mysterious doors laid across Slumberland. He guides Nemo through the rules of Slumberland and warns her to stay away from the Dream Cops. He intends to illegally pass from dream to dream until he finds the pearls.
The first dream Flip and Nemo enter belongs to a Spanish lady. Things go wrong for the duo when Flip gets distracted, and Agent Green (Weruche Opia) from the BOSA appears. Just when Agent Green was about to arrest Nemo and Flip, a nightmare starts chasing them both. Nemo tells Flip that she saw the nightmare on the night her father died, and Flip concludes that Nemo’s nightmare has been chasing her in Slumberland.
Flip and Nemo’s conversation is interrupted when Nemo suddenly wakes up. After school, Phillip brings Nemo her father’s boat on which they used to sail. Having not recovered from her father’s loss, Nemo asks Phillip to sell the boat. Later, Phillip asks Nemo not to shut the world on her just like her father did when Nemo’s mother died. That night, Nemo finds a hard time sleeping, but thanks to her uncle’s boring story about doorknobs, she finally enters Slumberland again.
What Happened To Flip?
Back in Slumberland, Flip and Nemo continue their journey to the Sea of Nightmares. Agent Green from BOSA catches up with them and arrests Flip for all his crimes over the years. She also takes little Nemo with her. Before locking up Flip in the bureau jail, Agent Green tells Flip that he has been wanting to never wake up because he was all alone in the real world. Now, he will be banished to become just a vague memory.
Nemo comes to know that Flip lost his memory after spending too much time in Slumberland. To wake up, he must know who he was, and he needs the pearls to achieve that. With Flip behind the bars, Agent Green releases Nemo after telling her that the pearls are just a myth.
When Nemo wakes up, Phillip decides to show her some old videos of him and Peter from a time when Peter and Phillip were inseparable. Watching the videos, Nemo realizes that Flip was actually Phillip’s outlaw name. After Peter met Nemo’s mother and went away, Phillip became alone and shut himself off from the world. After that, Phillip stopped seeing dreams.
Realizing that Flip is actually Phillip, Nemo heads back to Slumberland to rescue Flip from the bureau. Pretending to be a Dream Cop from the juvie department, Nemo helps Flip escape. Although Nemo tries to convince Flip that the pearls do not exist, Flip believes otherwise because Peter told him about the pearls.
Did Flip Ever Wake Up From His Dreams?
With the help of a flying goose, the duo escapes the bureau and arrives at the gateway to the Sea of Nightmares. At the entrance to the sea, Nemo decides to reveal his real identity to Flip, who refuses to believe that he’s an ordinary doorknob seller in the Waking World as opposed to an outlaw in Slumberland.
Shocked at the revelation, Flip decides to give up on waking up and turns back. Amid Nemo trying to convince Flip, Nemo is brought back from Slumberland when her teacher finds her bunking her classes. On the way back home, Nemo and Phillip get into a heated argument as misdirected emotions get the better of both.
Deciding she has to depart, Nemo leaves the home in the middle of the night while a storm rages outside. She takes her father’s boat to head toward the lighthouse. However, the storm causes her boat to flip, and she almost drowns in the ocean, entering Slumberland back again.
In Slumberland, Nemo enters the Sea of Nightmares and finally finds a magic pearl. Just as she was going to be attacked by her nightmare, Flip comes to the rescue and takes Nemo away from her horrible nightmare. With the nightmare tailing Flip and Nemo, they reach the lighthouse where Nemo is supposed to make the wish for her father to return.
Did Nemo See Her Father Again?
However, Nemo starts feeling uneasy suddenly as her body starts drowning in the Waking World. In the meantime, the nightmare hunts down Nemo and Flip. To help Nemo get her father back, Flip decides to sacrifice himself. While saving the pearl from the nightmare, Flip is caught by the dark entity. But he successfully manages to pass the pearl to Nemo, asking her to get her father back.
To Flip’s surprise, Nemo chooses to wake up Flip instead of wishing for her father. She then returns to the lighthouse to be greeted by Agent Green, who helps Nemo find another pearl through Pig. Nemo’s toy Pig had gulped a pearl at the Sea of Nightmares.
Using the pearl, Nemo wishes to be united with her father, and Peter appears before her in Slumberland. Post spending some time with Nemo, Peter tells her that her life awaits in the Waking World and not in Slumberland. Nemo must return to the world outside of dreams.
In the Waking World meanwhile, Phillip rescues Nemo from drowning with the help of the coast guard. Upon gaining consciousness, Nemo is greeted by Phillip who promises to never let go of her. Nemo observes that Phillip has changed from the last time she saw him as Flip had now united with Phillip. Phillip has found his lost self – the adventurous and fun-loving Flip.
In the end, Phillip and Nemo both move on from their traumas as they enter a new phase of life. While Flip and Nemo’s adventures in Slumberland might have ended, Phillip and Nemo’s are just beginning as they decide to approach life from a new lens.
Slumberland is now streaming on Netflix.
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