Dream House (2011)
Who is hotter than Daniel Craig right now? Maybe only
Hansel. The new James Bond movie is coming out and I thought I'd give
Dream House a watch because well, I never turn down a movie with Naomi Watts.
This movie has one of the worst rottentomatoes ratings that I've seen in
a while with everyone mentioning that the trailer ruined its twist. After
contemplating just skipping the movie and only watching the trailer, I've
decided that it would be fair to Daniel. Action!
Will (Daniel Craig) quits his job as an editor to spend more
time with his family. He’s a family
man?!? Maybe he can finally build that
dream house that he’s always uh, dreamed about.
He goes home to his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz also his real life wife)
and tosses a snowball at her. She says “you
gave me such a fright” to which my producer replied “No one says that”. Someone left her flowers on porch this
morning and jokes that they are probably from his secret admirer which is weird
because his hair has definitely looked better.
At 8:55 in we get to see him with his shirt off in bed. I know what you’re thinking, is almost nine
minutes too long to wait to see his dark nips and the answer is no because if
they did it any sooner, things couldn’t have been done classy.
The first sign of things getting weird is one of his daughter’s
claims to see someone in their back yard and the next day he finds footprints
in the snow. He heads down in his
basement and finds a bunch of punk kids having some kind of ritual. He runs them off and when asked what they are
doing down there, they answer by saying something about you don’t know about
the murders? I guess a whole family was
shot but a dad survived. I’m pretty sure
there is a twist and I think it was spoiled the second it was introduced. Also one of the dead girl’s names was Beatrice. Really?
There’s two more clues about twist given away, I’ll tell explain them at
the end.
He visits the psych ward the next day and the things that
happen again ruin the spoiler and are listed further below. 45 minutes in and after all of the spoiling
they just come out and tell us that he is the murderer through the director of
the psych ward explaining it to him. He
of course doesn’t take the news very well and continues acting like a crazy
person would. All of the people at the
beginning of the movie from his office a really psych patients which is the
only cool part so far. What makes all of
this weird is that there are 45 minutes left and the movie is only half
over. Maybe he will spend the rest of
the movie trying to find out why he did it?
There is what I thought was a flashback but it’s him
interacting with deceased family. He
looks just awful. The kids start
bleeding where they were shot which is also cool. The kids I guess re-die which is not cool. His house gets condemned which causes him to
go across the street to his neighbor Naomi’s house. She seems to believe that he really wasn’t
the guy who killed the family and that it was someone else. She then does the very normal neighborly
thing of running him a bath. I’m pretty
sure that Daniel Craig should never be taking a bath (at least not by himself).
THESE ARE ALL SECRETS I GUESS
Let’s take a second and consider this new idea. If he didn’t kill them, who else could
have? The only other characters in the
movie are really Naomi, her kid and her ex-husband. Also there is a creepy guy who’s kind of been
watching him but he is too much of a red herring so I’m going to rule him
out. It’s probably either Daniel or
Naomi. Hold that, there is a flash back
that shows the red herring actually doing the killing. Those two are talking in his house when the
ex-husband and the red herring show up and give Daniel a little bit of a
beating. The ex tells Naomi that it was
supposed to be her. Is this whole movie
a mistake and the hit man just showed up at the wrong house?
Jack the ex kills the hit man and plans on killing the wife
to I guess get some insurance money and his kid back while somehow framing
Craig in the process. Killing your
former spouse always is the best way to get full custody. The house is set on fire and Libby tries to
talk Craig through taking down Jack. I
guess she is more of a ghost than an imaginary person because she can do things
like move wind chimes (which are in a really windy place like the
basement). The two bad guys die and
Daniel and Naomi make it out. He runs
back into the house to save the ghosts (right?) and inside they tell him to
leave in what becomes his moment of letting them go. Craig writes a bestselling book called “Dream
House”.
THE END
ALL OF THE SPOILERS THAT ARE GIVEN AWAY: Punk kid says he
back which made me think it’s him, he finds an article about the dad being
released from a psych ward, Naomi brings him stew like there is no wife for him
to cook for and when she leaves is asked about who used to live there in which
she gives no response, we’re 30 minutes in and the Libby or any of the kids
have neither left the house or talked to anyone but Will and until they do I
think they’re dead, he visits the psych ward and Peter’s not there but a
picture of his kids are, on the video at the psych ward we never see Peter Ward’s
face.
FAVORITE SCENE: Him leaving the psych hospital and seeing
everyone. One of probably two cool
parts.
FAVORITE LINES: None in this movie
PRETENTIOUS RATINGS: “The premise may err on the daft side
but it’s played with a conviction and an atmosphere of bleak dread is carefully
evoked if not maintained until the final credits”. Can’t you just say that the plot is a little
bit of a stretch? Or is that too daft?
“Disappears up its own fundamental implausibility” Phillip
French. I wish you’d disappear up your
own you know what.
“This is one property you’d do well to stay away from” James
White. Sometimes there is a joke that is
so obvious that it can never be funny. I
can’t take you seriously if with your one sentence you choose any of the following:
This is a dream that I want to wake up from, something about a nightmare or
stay away from this house. I don’t know
you but I would love to think that you’re better than this.
RATING: If you looked up Dream House on Google Earth all you
would see is a red dot because just like pedophiles, it stinks! Just kidding 4.0 Cadbury Dream bars. Everywhere I looked said that the trailer gave
away the whole spoiler so I purposely avoided it. Now that I’m done, I gave it a watch (above) and not only does it give things away by the scenes shown but it literally
tells you in text that pops up. It could
have saved me 45 minutes easy. And the
ending, woof. The whole movie was an
accident because the guy went to the wrong house? Something is wrong when a director makes a
guy look so unbelievably sketchy that you are actually shocked to find out that
he IS the bad guy instead of one of the very few normal people.
Let’s talk about the director. The movie was test screened and not really
liked at all which made the director go back and change some scenes. While he was doing that, the studio jumped in
and made their own changes to the flick.
That huge intrusion led to the crappy trailer, Craig and Weisz deciding
not to promote the movie and the director asking for his name to be taken out
of the movie. Things not adding up are starting
to make a lot of sense now. Think about
it, what if we found out that Bruce Willis was really dead halfway through The Sixth
Sense. Any director would probably know
that it’s better to use that twist to build suspense throughout the whole movie
instead of spoiling things. Once we
found out he was crazy there is just a huge drop off in emotion. Who cares what happens next, the biggest
story line is already complete. Also a
funny note is that this movie wasn’t screened in advance for critics which is
usually a bad sign.
ALTERNATE ENDING: I thought this movie could have some
pieces that if done better, would make an enjoyable film. What I really wanted for out of the rest of
the movie after we find out that he was the dad was to see him struggle. Daniel Craig’s acting was one of the better
parts of the movie and I thought it would have been pretty cool to see him have
to deal with living in a house with the ghosts of his dead family. It’s pretty harsh and could have been
something almost memorable. Even after
he told his family that they were dead and he was the only one who could see
them, I think it would work. But instead
of showing a pretty sweet of one man’s struggle against his own imagination,
they came up with this dumb storyline of the neighbor trying to kill his
wife. Not the way I would have done it
and a mega let down.
WHAT WOULD I DO IF I WAS THE MAIN CHARACTER: I don’t know
how to put this civilly but I’ll try.
Losing your whole family and thinking that you were another person
probably is a bad day but if I lived across the street to a Naomi Watts who was
into me, I could forget about them. Just
kidding that was harsh. I’d remember but
I’d also take more baths at Naomi’s place.
It’s what they would want me to do.
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SEQUEL: 100% certain that no one in real
life will touch a sequel of this but if they did it would be called Daydream
Room for Rent in a 4/2 (Fully Furnished).
Daniel Craig will spend the whole movie daydreaming about how his life
could have been different if he just stayed with Naomi. Instead he unwilling shares his shampoo money
with a community college student who refers to himself as “Big Corona”.
Whole family doing alive things
Naomi sporting a turtleneck
Why can't anyone see me
If this movie was trying to be The Shining, it was 0% scary.
Bad guy sporting the I'm obviously the bad guy look
Adieu
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