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    Dream House

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
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    So Bad It’s Good rating: 5/5

    Most movies that are “so bad they’re good again” descend into unintentional hilarity because of bad acting, poor special effects and lousy dialogue. “Dream House” is a whole new kind of “So Bad It’s Good Movie”, one that isn’t really funny as much as it is so insane that it demands to be seen. There are some unbelievable plot twists present so I’m going to try and keep the spoilers at a minimum. I sat down and watched the movie with two other people and all three of us made predictions just before the first big reveal towards the end of the story. All three of our predictions were completely different and seemingly contradictory, but they all ended up being true. Another special note for anyone that might be interested in this film: do not even look at the Wikipedia page or at the trailers because the film is so inept and simultaneously good at keeping its plot twists hidden that people have just assumed you’re supposed to know them and have included major spoilers in the first sentence.

    It’s about a man named Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) He and his family move into this lovely new house. Libby (Rachel Weisz) and the two girls have a bit of trouble adjusting though because there are some weird things going on. There are people spraying graffiti all over the house for unknown reasons, there’s a guy looking into their windows in a most creepy fashion and no one will give them any answers as to what exactly is going on except for the fact that some time ago, there were a series of murders inside the house! With that setup, this movie shouldn’t be too far from ghosts, murders, hallucinations, psychiatric wards, split personalities and all sorts of crazy developments. The scariest thing of all though, is that this is not a horror movie, it’s a drama!

    You can’t intentionally make a movie this nutty. As I mentioned earlier, there are several really big plot twists throughout the film, one of which comes in about forty five minutes in. When you are served this revelation, you think to yourself that it’s really weird. Normally that kind of reveal would come right at the end of a movie and we’d have maybe a big special-effects sequence or a complete mental breakdown sort of dramatic climax. Well, we kind of get that... and then the movie keeps on going. Our protagonist Will confirms himself as a person who gets more and more mentally unstable as he decides to accept this revelation and just go on with his day as if nothing happened.

    “Dreamhouse” is simultaneously predictable and so original you can’t really see it coming. The main reason is that when it begins, the movie really, really resembles Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”. I don’t usually like to compare one movie to another, mostly because everything borrows from something else and that if you haven’t seen one of the movies, the comparison would be lost upon you, but hear me out on this one. So we have a family, moving into a new house in the wintertime so the father can work on a novel. There are creepy, unexplainable things that happen in the house. There is a scene where some writing on the wall is seen in a mirror and reveals a terrifying message, there is a vibe that the father is going crazy, maybe even murderous. We even get a scene of two little girls standing in a hallway in a spooky manner! All of that is in the first half of the movie though, the second half is some kind of weird drama with one of the most obvious and incompetent villains ever. It’s a mesh of bad writing, over-the-top character design and “so obvious you couldn’t see it coming” plot twists.

    I really don’t know what else to say about this film. In a way it’s kind of beautiful. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a horror movie, a thriller or a weird genre drama but one thing is for sure, it’s utterly inept. The acting is pretty good and like I said, there’s no way you can see it all coming but unless you want to watch the cinematic equivalent of a squirrel that runs across the street, dodges a car only to get eaten by a dog, then spit out as the dog get bitten by a tiger and then vaporized by a meteor don’t even come close to this one.

    For you fellow bad movie fans, my advice is to run out and rent this one without looking at any trailers and without do any additional research on it. Grab your friends and hand out some pens and papers. Tell everyone to guess what the ending will be and at the end of the film, have everyone read what they predicted. One thing’s for sure, it will be a memorable experience and one that might even be enlightening depending on what people ultimately think. “Dreamhouse” is pretty awful but it’s also fascinating. (On Dvd, June 9, 2014)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  7.2.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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