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Dream House
| Released |
25 November 2011 |
| Director |
Jim Sheridan |
Starring
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Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, Marton Csokas, Elias Koteas, Jane Alexander |
| Writer(s) |
David Loucka |
Producer(s)
|
David Robinson, Daniel Bobker, Ehren Kruger, James G. Robinson |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
92 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama, mystery, thriller |
| Rating |
15A |
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I see dumb people.
The trailer for Dream House pretty much tells the entire story in the space of two and a half minutes. For once, I’m not mentioning this as a criticism. On the contrary, this spoiler-filled trailer actually provides a public service for its potential audience, saving you the pain of sitting through an extra ninety minutes of towering stupidity. Yet, sit through it I did, struggling to stay awake when not laughing at the ludicrous plot points and hammy performances. This is all the more surprising considering the high calibre of the stars involved; Jim Sheridan directs while Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts star.
Craig plays Will Atenton, a successful editor who takes early retirement to renovate his dream home with wife Libby (Weisz) and their two daughters. Strange things start to happen; a man watches the house, a hilariously naff group of goths hold seances in their garage and neighbours (including Naomi Watts) observe the new family with suspicion. Will investigates and discovers that not long ago a mother and two daughters were murdered in the house...can you see where this is going? Yes, it turns out Will is the husband who was suspected of the murder and that he has just been released from a mental hospital. The house is really a broken down shell and his wife and child are ghostly remembrances. But did Will really murder his family?
All of this “I see dead people” stuff is in the trailer. As is the fact of Will’s real identity. Nevertheless, it is still “revealed” a good three quarters of the way into the film and presented as a dramatic climax. This left me struggling to see the point of the entire exercise. If this twist is available (and is obvious within the first five minutes, even without the benefit of previous knowledge), then why is the lead up to it so torturously sustained? Jim Sheridan is not the kind of director one would expect to take on a project so empty so I’d hazard a guess that for him, Dream House was intended as a mildly spooky study of grief and loss. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on any level and the story is so flimsy that it cannot support any kind of insight. The cast are left floundering toward a conclusion so preposterous as to be laugh out loud funny.
A waste of time for everyone involved.
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Linda O’Brien |
