DREAM HOUSE
Directed by: Jim Sheridan
Written by: David Louka
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Elias Koteas, Jane Alexander
Troubled film productions may be more common than not in or out of Hollywood, but when a trouble film production involves a two-time Oscar-nominated director, an Oscar winner (for Best Supporting Actress), an Oscar nominee (actually two, more about that anon), and a British actor best known as the latest, reel-world incarnation of a decades-old super-spy, it’s cause, if not for concern, then, at minimum, curiosity. Giving in to that curiosity in the case of DREAM HOUSE, a supernatural horror film helmed by Irish writer-director Jim Sheridan (the aforementioned, newly named two-time Oscar nominee) and starring Rachel Weisz (an Oscar winner for THE CONSTANT GARDENER), Naomi Watts (Oscar nominee), and Daniel Craig (Bond, James Bond), would be, however, a choice you’ll regret minutes into the thankfully, mercifully brief DREAM HOUSE, a absolute waste of everyone’s time and talent.
When we first meet the oddly surnamed, dark-suited Will Atenton (Daniel Craig), he’s happily signing a non-disclosure agreement, accepting a severance package (and a book deal), and exiting a comfortable existence as a big-city publisher. Will’s decided to do what many people dream of doing, but never do for a variety of reasons, usually economic: Despite familial and financial obligations, Will’s chucked a steady, well-paying gig to try his hand at writing the Great American Novel (as written by a British actor, that is). Will seems to have an idyllic life: minimal money worries (if any), a large, comfortable, suburban home (a fixer-upper from everything we see), and, most importantly, a supportive, beautiful wife, Libby (Rachel Weisz), and angelic daughters, Trish (Taylor Geare) and Dee Dee (Claire Geare), aged seven and five, respectively.
But every idyll comes to an end. Will’s comes to an end when Dee Dee spots a man peeking into a window. Will investigates and finds nothing. Will attempts to engage his nearest neighbor, Ann Patterson (Naomi Watts), but, knowing far more than Will or, briefly, the audience, responds evasively. It’s not until Will stumbles into local goth-punks using his basement for a ritual of some kind (or, more likely, a make-out spot as teens, regardless of their clothing styles or stated dispositions, are wont to do, that he discovers, to his horror and Libby’s, that their “dream house” is anything but. In fact, their dream house is a nightmare house, the site of the brutal, unexplained murders of a family five years earlier. Apparently (you’ll see that word often in this review), Will and Libby’s neighbors, let alone the realtor who sold them the house, failed to mention their dream house’s violent past. As the slumbering house stumbles into sentience, Will, Libby, and their daughters become, naturally enough, the targets of its paranormal wrath.
To say more would be to spoil DREAM HOUSE’s thin, underfed storyline, a storyline that, at least initially, seems to indicate we’re in for a slick, supernatural film, albeit one that borrows heavily from Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, THE SHINING, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (a true-until-it-was-debunked non-fiction book adapted twice, both times unremarkably), or even the Korean-made, decade-best list topper, A TALE OF TWO SISTERS. DREAM HOUSE’s producers, however, weren’t concerned about spoiling one of, if not the major, plot twist in the full-length trailer released a month or two ago. That plot point occurs roughly halfway through DREAM HOUSE, spinning it from haunted house story to psychological freak-out. The promise of more turns out to be just that, a promise DREAM HOUSE’s producers leave unfulfilled. Instead, we’re left with a flaccid, dull, predictable film woefully short on scares or engaging, multi-dimensional characters.
With a derivative, underwritten script credited to the little-known David Loucka, it’s left to moviegoers and critics to ponder the imponderable: How, exactly, did Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts, not to mention talented thespians like Marton Csokas, Elias Koteas, and Jane Alexander (a Tony Award winner and multiple Oscar nominee) became involved with DREAM HOUSE. Maybe, possibly, it was the lure of working with a usually reliable, if middlebrow, director like Sheridan. Maybe it was working with the other members of the cast (Craig and Weisz married shortly after production ended), or maybe it was just to fill a hole in their acting schedules with a paying gig. What we do know, however, is that Sheridan clashed with his producers at Morgan Creek. We also know that those same producers refused to allow Sheridan to cut the film he wanted. Whether giving Sheridan “final cut” would have made a difference is anyone’s guess, but the results onscreen are far from anyone’s finest work (far from it, actually).
