Dream House seemed like it had everything going for it. An acclaimed director in Irishman Jim Sheridan, an A-list cast with Danial Craig, Rachel Weitz and Naomi Watts and a creepy, twisty turny horror plot to give The Sixth Sense a run for it's money. Then came the rumours of a major, studio initiated re-edit and reviews of a film that truly sucked arse. So it came as a bit of a shock that most of Dream House is actually pretty bloody good. Most of.
The first act is where most films of this type get it right (including the terrible Insidious) with Craig, Weitz and their two young girls moving into an idyllic suburban house. There's some strange goings on, a tense atmosphere is maintained and a mystery is slowly and intriguingly unraveled. Amazingly the film overcomes what could have been a fatal flaw quite early on by revealing a major plot twist...something I'd worked out ten minutes earlier. Rather than let the mystery drag out the screenwriters come clean and admit a major truth, changing the focus of the movie and maintaining the momentum of the plot. Nice one.
All is well with the film until the final quarter of an hour when it bottles out of making a bold plot choice and instead goes for the lovely, Hollywood friendly ending. To make matters worse it introduces a feeble crime/whodunit element very late in the day which majestically obliterates all the good work achieved in the first 80 minutes. I've heard this argument made incorrectly about lots of other films (like Identity and From Dusk Till Dawn) but this I feel a true example of a plot twist destroying a film completely. Was this twist in the plot originally or was it a re-shoot? Either way, it's hard to imagine, even with Sheridan in the editing suite, anybody making this story convincing with the conclusion as it was filmed.
No comments:
Post a Comment