Dream House (2011)

Let me begin by saying absolutely nothing in Jim Sheridan’s Dream House makes any sense. Not in the slightest. Plus, it only gets more ridiculous as it goes along. Yet most of the film is still a pretty captivating psychological drama that—while it quite clearly rips off movies like The Shining and Shutter Island—maintains an impressive level of intrigue until it all comes off the rails in the final act. By and large, it’s creepy when it wants to be, it’s emotional when it wants to be, and it’s thrilling when it wants to be. Only in hindsight does it seem all that flawed, but oh lord is it ever silly. I do not argue Dream House is a great film (or even a very good one), but that the reviews are so vitriolic across the board is rather surprising to me. At its best, it’s a standard but effective thriller with a solid lead performance from Daniel Craig. In my eyes, there are far worse ways to spend your money. You could, for example, voluntarily pay to see Abduction. When contrasted with that film, Dream House seems like the second coming of the Kubrick.

Craig plays Will Atenton, a writer who returns home to work on his novel. It is there that his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and two daughters are still getting accustomed to their new suburban home. For a while, it seems like their dream house (so to speak), but soon Will leans that the family that lived in the house before him were the victims of a murder allegedly perpetrated by the father. As Will investigates the history of the house—and learns that the murderer may be roaming free—he discovers some information that drastically changes his view of the situation. If you’ve seen the trailer (or several television ads), you know what this information is. I shall withhold it here, and also tell you that there are additional twists that come later in the film as well. If you’ve seen the trailer, you haven’t seen the whole movie. Just the first half.

However, the moments when Dream House reveals these secrets are its weakest points by a considerable margin. Most of them can be seen a mile away, and they are rarely treated with the appropriate amount of weight. Above all, it just feels as if the film knows the twists are incredibly obvious. What I found far more watchable was the journey around the stupidity. Craig is really able to sell his character’s plight, and when the initial revelation comes—no matter how unsurprising it may be—he is able to elevate it so that it becomes rather watchable. (High praise, I know.) This isn’t a particularly scary film, but I think it was always meant to be a psychological drama more than a horror film. The problem: Hollywood doesn’t sell psychological dramas to the general public. Director Jim Sheridan essentially lost control of the film to the studio late in the process, leading to a final cut that he was wholly unsatisfied with. Craig and Weisz were also unhappy, and as a result they refused to promote the film. It’s no wonder; Dream House feels like 92 minutes of a pretty great film hampered by excessive studio interference.

However, I spent most of the screening feeling generous toward Dream House, if only because it was far more competent and compelling than I was anticipating. Unfortunately, this all changes with the ending, which pulls off the Tourist-level feat of being both incredibly predictable and absolutely ridiculous. It eschews all of the (somewhat) compelling drama that came before in favor of some cheap shocks and lame action beats, and it just winds up feeling cheap and unearned. (Not to spoil it, but it also concerns certain characters who show up a few times before but never actually get anything to do… that is, until the movie calls for it.) This is all followed up by a laughable final shot, and over the course of just 20 minutes a movie I was ready to adamantly defend became downright terrible. In hindsight, I realize just how difficult it is to claim Dream House is good in the slightest.

Yet here I stand, choosing to throw the film a bone just because I feel the vitriolic reception (8% on Rotten Tomatoes and not a lot of money at the box office) isn’t entirely deserved. Dream House is a mediocre psychological thriller, not a crime against humanity. In fact, there is quite a bit of good it in, including Sheridan’s direction and an effective performance from Craig. No argument I make in its favor can be all that intelligent, and few of the complaints hurled in its direction can be dismissed as off-base. But—with the exception of the ending—it pulled me in at all the right moments. It will be forgotten quickly, but it’s far more worthwhile than many of the films the public chooses to embrace.

Grade: B-