DREAM HOUSE (Jim Sheridan). 100 minutes. Opens Friday (September 30). See listing. Rating: N
After on-set infidelities and endlessly delayed reshoots, Dream House arrives in theatres with little fanfare and no press screenings – not the treatment you’d expect for a film by an Oscar-nominated director (Jim Sheridan) with an all-star cast (Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts). But given the almost incoherent film that resulted from all those production troubles, it’s what it deserves.
Craig stars as the father of an idyllic family and prime suspect in their murder. After being away for a while, he starts living in their dilapidated house/crime scene, haunted by memories – or are they hallucinations? A lovely lady across the street (Watts) sympathizes for no apparent reason, and the local authorities seem remarkably calm about a possible murderer wandering around talking about his deceased family as if they were still alive. That’s just a sampling of the ridiculous plot.
Dream House isn’t the worst film ever made, just a big mess. Sheridan’s skill with character dramas (In America, My Left Foot) doesn’t translate to semi-supernatural thrillers. What should be a suspenseful romp plods along at the glacial pace of a family weepy.
The plot, filled with holes and abandoned character arcs, is made worse by slapdash re-editing that awkwardly inserts new dialogue from piss-poor postproduction rewrites into characters’ mouths.
The stars do their best, giving decent performances even though this confusing nonsense doesn’t deserve the effort. I’d imagine they all want to pretend they weren’t involved with the film at this point, so it’s probably best for their sake and yours to just pretend Dream House doesn’t exist.
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