Jim Sheridan is a master storyteller. The director of such acclaimed films as My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father and The Boxer, Sheridan has a knack for directing small films with incredibly powerful and well developed characters.
So when he was attached to Dream House, a film marketed as a horror/supernatural/thriller, the horror community stood up and took notice. Helping fuel our interests was the Dream House cast. Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts all had their name plastered on the poster above the title which lead some of us down The Shinning Anticipation Path.
Then we screened the film.
Dream House is a mess of a film that probably offers some good twists if not for the fact that you will be so bored and uninterested in the developments that you have either nodded off or lost interest in what is happening to the main characters.
We start with the obligatory introductions of publisher Will Atenton (Craig) who quits his job so that he and his wife Libby (Weisz) and their two small daughters can move into a rural home located in what we like to call ‘Bumblefucknowhere”.
Not long after they have settled, they learn that the house was the scene of a murder of a mother and her two children. Will seems a tad obsessed in trying to find answers as to the previous owners of the house and the person with the most answers seems to be his neighbor (Watts) who looks throughout the entire film that she lost a bet and had to agree to star in the film to cover her losses.
It is upon the investigation that Will gets some puzzling information from an Institution that will have him questioning his own sanity. We will leave the rest for you to discover if you brave this terrible venture of entertainment, but all you have to do is watch the trailer of the film to have the major plot detail thrown in your face.
For a film with such talent involved both in front of and behind the cameras, it was amazing to us just how awful the end result is. It’s not that any of the characters are completely unbelievable (well….), but the whole story and development of the characters is so downright boring in its execution that you will likely be hitting the button on your remote that details the amount of time left in the film rather than being engrossed with what is happening on the screen.
The film was shot in our backyard – almost literally. The fate of the house at the end of the film was watched by many of our neighbors and friends. But even with that association with the film, we still found it to be terrible. Even Jim Sheridan has attempted (unsuccessfully) to have his name removed from the project.
You could do worse. There are films that involve Crystal Skulls that are far more a waste of time than this weak ass entry. But that doesn’t exactly sound like an endorsement does it?
|
