DREAM HOUSE (2011)
Here's the thing: I'm okay with bad movies. Really, I am. If a movie is bad, but understands that it is bad, even better. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Deep Blue Sea (1999) and thoroughly enjoyed it. What I can't stand is a disappointing movie. A movie that has a lot of potential, but tries too hard to be greater than it is. Dream House unfortunately fell under the disappointing category. The plot was promising. A man named Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) moves into a house with a dark and bloody history with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and kids. Maybe it's a story that's been told before, but it's one that, for the most part, has a good history of always delivering a satisfying tale.
The actors themselves are all very talented and they make of the script what they can, but you can only breath so much life into something that refuses to live. I understand that the case could be made that half of the movie takes place in Will Atenton's fantasy land and therefore you can make the argument that his fantasy is stilted and flat. Except for the one simple fact that Will is supposed to be a successful writer, and therefore he should be able to dream up some better dialog. Still, the film limps along--wounded, but still pushing through, mainly by way of the excellent chemistry between Craig, Weisz, and Watts. It's not until the third act that it really falls flat on its face, pulling in unnecessary characters, trying to make things fit where they don't belong, and generally mucking up the entire structure of the story. In the end, the film's biggest issue is that it simply tries too hard: on one hand, we have a movie about a man gone mad with grief, on the other hand, we have a whodunit helmed by an unreliable narrator. It was Fight Club (1999) and Taken (2008) with just a splash of The Shining (1980). It couldn't chose between being a dark psychological thriller or a campy horror movie, and instead fell somewhere in the dead-end grey area between "a feel good" film and a "good feel bad" film.
My only advice to someone who wants to see this film? Don't watch the trailer. It gives away a twist that might have bumped the movie up a star for me if I hadn't been waiting for it to come around.
The actors themselves are all very talented and they make of the script what they can, but you can only breath so much life into something that refuses to live. I understand that the case could be made that half of the movie takes place in Will Atenton's fantasy land and therefore you can make the argument that his fantasy is stilted and flat. Except for the one simple fact that Will is supposed to be a successful writer, and therefore he should be able to dream up some better dialog. Still, the film limps along--wounded, but still pushing through, mainly by way of the excellent chemistry between Craig, Weisz, and Watts. It's not until the third act that it really falls flat on its face, pulling in unnecessary characters, trying to make things fit where they don't belong, and generally mucking up the entire structure of the story. In the end, the film's biggest issue is that it simply tries too hard: on one hand, we have a movie about a man gone mad with grief, on the other hand, we have a whodunit helmed by an unreliable narrator. It was Fight Club (1999) and Taken (2008) with just a splash of The Shining (1980). It couldn't chose between being a dark psychological thriller or a campy horror movie, and instead fell somewhere in the dead-end grey area between "a feel good" film and a "good feel bad" film.
My only advice to someone who wants to see this film? Don't watch the trailer. It gives away a twist that might have bumped the movie up a star for me if I hadn't been waiting for it to come around.
