Monday, October 10, 2011

DREAM HOUSE

“DREAM HOUSE” (Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz & Naomi Watts)

Normally I steer clear of haunted house movies, but the upper echelon cast made me hopeful that this one would be better than the norm. It is, but it still has drawbacks.
For one thing, there aren’t enough characters – I knew the ‘actual’ killer had to be one of two people - & the only reason I was slightly surprised is that it turned out to be the most obvious of the two – the other possible character would have made for a more interesting outcome.
But it did set up nicely. Daniel Craig as Will moves into a new home with his wife, Libby (Rachel Weisz) & two young daughters. Goth teens appear in their basement one night holding a ritual for the family that was murdered there.
Naomi Watts plays Ann, the next door neighbor who constantly looks at Will as though she’s either deathly afraid of him, or deeply concerned for his well being.
Will finds out that Peter Ward is the name of the man who murdered his family in the house and that Ward was recently released from the local insane asylum. When he goes to the facility for the criminally insane to find out why Ward was set free, he is shown a video of the man when he was first brought in – A gruesome looking being with an ugly bullet wound scar in the back of his head is seen having a violent reaction to his incarceration – when the killer turns toward the camera, Peter Ward turns out to look exactly like Will. Is it the old ‘just a coincidence’ ploy or the tired ‘evil twin’ device?
Or is friendly easygoing Will actually Peter Ward; & if he is – who are those three females living with him in his house acting as though they are his wife & daughters?
It’s a potentially interesting plot – but unfortunately there aren’t enough characters introduced to make it a conundrum as to what the truth might actually be.
So this is basically a decently acted haunted house/ghost story that doesn’t challenge the viewer all that much. It’s O.K., but it had the potential to be much better...

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