Dream House

Wow! This was painful disappointment. A very promising line up featuring Jim Sheridan as director, with Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts in the main roles, but a terrible product that doesn’t work at all. The moment you start thinking a little about it, you realise that it doesn’t make any sense. And yet, the premise is not pointless, it just needs a completely different approach. (16/12/2011)

Oh dear, so many familiar names and such a lackluster outcome... First of all, this was hardly a horror film because the creators tried to scare me with jump scares that would only work on kids at a summer camp. Honestly, I can't even pin down the genre of this movie; to me, it felt like a mishmash of everything the creators had ever seen on screen, and it didn't quite gel. I don't have the highest opinion of Canadian cinema (with some exceptions), and this movie certainly didn't improve my view. / Lesson learned: When you're about to get in bed with someone, check their pulse first. (10/05/2022)

Dream House looks like an adaptation of a book that could have easily (in a weekend) been written by Stephen King. The protagonist is about to write a novel, he, his wife and children find a new house, but their garden is haunted at night, the house has a mysterious past, the neighbors, who might know something about it, are stubbornly silent... And the atmosphere gets thicker and thicker. So now is when the (potential) audience splits into "Sounds good, I want to see it", "I don't care and don't want to see it" and "It'll be crap, but I have to see it so I can bitch about it later". I'm very glad I ended up in the first group (and I'm sure the aforementioned "kingliness" is to blame - I bet the screenwriter is a big fan of the master too). Those expecting a bloody horror film full of ghosts will be disappointed, but Dream House is a very good drama with a suspenseful plot. If you enjoy the opening 40 minutes or so, I think you'll devour the rest of the film after the twist that comes halfway through. The acting is superb and Daniel Craig's performance is a joy to watch, the fabulously chilling music of John Debney plays in the background, and director Sheridan literally creates the perfect atmosphere and clearly knows what the word gradation means. On the one hand I'm sorry that Dream House is so poorly rated, but on the other hand I'm glad that I enjoyed it so much.__P.S. Avoid the full trailer.__P.P.S. And if you listen to the soundtrack before the film, avoid the song titles for good measure. (02/02/2012)

To accept a role from Jim Sheridan is a matter of course even for the top Hollywood stars. But this time it was a misstep. Dream House is dramatically so fragmented and contradictory that it is quite an art to decide if it is the script or the directing that is more at fault. Probably both. This film combines two incompatible topics, each of which asks for a different filmmaking approach. An interesting psychological game with the viewer based on Scorsese’s Shutter Island, which by one turn of a screenplay page, with a totally dysfunctional and unwanted twist, becomes an ordinary murder thriller from rural America. These two sides of the film are connected by a dubious ghost-themed storyline, which further highlights their incompatibility and becomes rather ridiculous in contrast to what it was supposed to be, which is romantic-melancholic. It is possible to deduce what the creators’ intentions were from the resulting sweet-and-sour mishmash, but things could not go any more wrong. By the way, the sweaty and haggard Daniel Craig with a greasy hairstyle would make a great Hannibal Lecter. (06/10/2011)