Starring: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts Director: Jim Sheridan Category: IIA
Dream House, directed by Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan, is a mediocre suspense thriller that's like Shutter Island crossed with The Others.
Daniel Craig plays Will Atenton, a workaholic editor of a publishing house who decides to quit his job in New York city and relocate his family - including his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and two daughters (Taylor Geare and Claire Geare, above with Craig and Weisz) - to a New England suburb to start anew.
Shortly after their arrival, however, things begin to get spooky: kids in the neighbourhood break into their basement for kicks and call their home a slaughter house while a menacing stranger - the previous owner of the house suspected of murdering his wife and kids - spies on the family from the front yard. Even their sympathetic neighbour Anne Patterson (Naomi Watts) wears an eerie facial expression that is more unsettling than comforting.
As Atenton researches the house's history, which leads him to a psychiatric hospital, everything falls apart and our hero descends into a confused madness, suggesting that in times of great trauma the line between sanity and madness is wafer thin.
The film has an interesting and scary premise. It also has a great orchestral soundtrack composed by John Debney. Yet the usually competent Sheridan, who was reported to be significantly at odds with the studio during production, apparently couldn't make up his mind about whether he wanted to direct a haunted house movie or Hitchcockian thriller. In the end he gets it all wrong by trying to do both. Suspense ebbs away at the mid-point when the plot is prematurely unveiled and the film goes downhill from there.