Review of Dream House (2011) by Henrik S — 09 Dec 2013

All the excuses used to explain the commercial failure of this film might be valid to a degree. False advertising,, the director fired during post-production, the cast refusing to campaign for it, but all of these interesting facts could not cover the fact that this film is plainly put - not that good by any account.

Daniel Craig is quite impressive playing the family father, haunted by someone's else's past, but the rest of the cast just falls short (Weisz and Watts are colourless) or is just painful to watch (Cskokas and Koteas play the role like the bad guys from Home Alone).

The twist can be smelled from a mile away and more than half of the film just does not make sense, both in terms of the script as well as plausability of the characters' choices, motivations and actions.

At some point, the film drifts off into that awful anything-goes area of artistic filmmaking where it becomes impossible to relate to anything that happens on the screen. All in all, the film starts out as a decent, scary thriller but the forceful and hefty mutation into some sort of art-house film about the nature of insanity and guilt never leaves a solid structure to enjoy this the story by.