A disaster from the beginning, goddawful thriller Dream House has proved a bonafide nightmare for everyone involved. Jim Sheridan fought tooth and nail with Morgan’s Creek studios over the script, the re-cuts and the now infamous trailer, which is a head-exploding exercise in sheer twist-revealing idiocy. Think Kevin Spacey waving cheerfully at the camera, saying “It’s me! It’s me all along! And Kobayashi’s a mug! Literally!”, while in the background Hayley Joel Osmond plays tag with Casper, and Orson Welles decorates his childhood sled with a floral-themed graffiti tag. Even the cast refused to do any publicity, while Sheridan unsuccessfully fought to have his name removed from the film. And it’s heartbreakingly easy to see why.
When Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and their two daughters move into their new home, their life is one sickeningly ideal Kodak moment, complete with an incessantly tinkling piano score. But as the neighbours keep their distance and rumours begin to circulate about the fate of the former occupants, it’s clear that life is not perfect as it initially appears.
It’s difficult to convey just how wildly inept this film is. I’m tempted to just slam my head against my keyboard repeatedly, conveying not only the finesse of the screenplay, but how I felt watching it. For each one of its positive points (there are three – the nicely considered disintegration of Daniel Craig’s appearance as he enters reality, Rachel Weisz’s lustrous L’Oréal worthy locks and... and... no, I lied, there’s only two), there’s an ocean of inexplicably obvious tells, awkward, exposition-laden dialogue, horribly blatant symbolism and a depressing lack of atmosphere or suspense. The inevitable “twist”, which is in the trailer, is immediately obvious and clumsily handled, and the confused, nonsensical showdown has the air of a director who just gave up.
Stay the hell away from this film.