Daydreams is a mirror for all of us, especially Gen Z. It reflects contemporary society by showing the mundane, slow moments that consume our lives. Scrolling social media, paying rent, brain rotting, sitting, depressed. Keep this in mind as you read the plot summary; the narrative of Daydreams is in the character and the atmosphere. Using the flow of time to watch life play out lulls the audience into the same state as the characters, allowing them to reflect on their own alienation, on the “collective depression” that capitalism creates.

Haley, a former cheerleader who dropped out of college, is our guide through this film. She suffers from depression, a chronic pain/fatigue condition her doctor can’t pin down, and a gluten intolerance. She’s a character we rarely see on screen: passive. Haley will frustrate audiences. They will want her to “do something,” “snap out of it,” and “grow up.” The film refuses to give them this satisfaction. This is not the story of adulthood; this is the story of what capitalism steals from us.

Haley works sporadically, navigates the health care system, misses rent payments, lets student loan debt interest pile up, pushes people away, struggles through ineffective treatments, and sleeps. She is the subject of 21st-century precarity, Gen Z feeling the full effects of neoliberalism. She exists merely as a body to extract profit from, whether it's through her content writing, insurance companies, or landlords.

Daydreams progresses seasonally, beginning in the Fall and ending at the break of Spring. Through this period, we see Haley move through a cycle of depression. It begins with her general exhaustion, keeping up with her doctor’s appointments, her work, and her roommate.

However, a new wrinkle is thrown into her life, the new angst of Gen Z—turning 26. As a freelancer with no benefits, she must move off of her mom’s insurance and onto her own. The film depicts this scene in detail as Haley and her older sister, Ashley, learn about the process of purchasing insurance from the Marketplace. These sequences are an example of how duration and atmosphere tell the story. Showing the process in complete reveals the absurdity of capitalist bureaucracy.

This puts more stress and strain on Haley. Her relationship with her roommate, Emma, takes on this strain as Haley becomes messier, withdrawn, and a bad roommate. Thanksgiving arrives and she must face her mother, a conservative Christian woman who wants the best for Haley but pushes her into all the wrong new age remedies. At dinner is her stepsister, Rachel, a radical student at the University of Michigan. Rachel takes an interest in Haley. They connect over Instagram.

By December, the future is temporarily bright with an intense writing deadline to meet by Christmas. Throughout the month, Haley furiously works since you never know when more work will come. At this same time period, the past comes back into her life as her ex-boyfriend, Ryan appears from Chicago. Seeing him brings out a past version of Haley, fun, bubbly, charming. Like everything else, the feeling and the work is temporary.

As the holidays drift away, so does Haley into the new year. Feeling more and more useless, she falls deeper into the delirium of dissociation. Her reality becomes fragmented as she misses rent payments, looks for a new job, Ryan disappears back to Chicago, and her savings drain more and more. When she’s told that the current writing project is on hold, Haley drifts into a catatonic depression. She tries to explain to her doctor and is eventually recommended to a psychiatrist but is hit with a wall of administrative burden, paperwork, and forms.

With everything fleeting, Haley drifts into a ghostly state. She becomes haunted, drifting in and out of sleep and the doom scroll of Instagram and TikTok. She ignores calls and texts from Ashley. Her body, frozen in time, the ever-present, no future.

This deliberate overstimulation creates the delirium that Haley falls into. The nature of time slipping away from thoughts, friends, bills, and dreams turning into dust. The anodyne nature of bureaucracy contributes to her depression. Threads of life to hang on to come and go, completely unresolved by the end of the film—this is life happening before our eyes. This is the experience of Gen Z. No stability, no careers, just floating from gig to gig in the collective depression.

The only one left to save her is her sister, Ashley, and her husband, Henry, the smallest community left to Haley. When Ashley finds Haley not responding to her calls, she takes action, recognizing Haley’s inability to care for herself at this moment, and asks her to move in, despite the fact that Ashley is pregnant. These moments between them show the way for the audience, the need to move from the individual to the collective, even if it begins with just a few people who care about one another.

As winter thaws, Haley starts taking walks in Ashley’s suburb. No plan or agenda, just walking, disconnecting. Ashley gives her time to simply rest, a feeling quite different from the exhaustion she’s felt before.

One day, on a walk through the park, she finds herself in an abandoned corridor and feels the presence of her ghost, her depression. She’s overcome with emotion as she stands alone. It’s at this moment that she recognizes her alienation and realizes that she wants to live. To simply live! That’s it. To recognize that an alternative is possible, to see her future as if for the very first time. The film ends with a small action carrying out this recognition, Haley washing the dishes after dinner, contributing, even if small to start, to the collective that gave her the support she needed.