5.5 | / 10 |
Users | 3.2 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.1 |
Successful publisher Will Atenton quit a job in New York City to relocate his wife, Libby, and two girls to a quaint New England town. But as they settle into their new life, they discover their perfect home was the murder scene of a mother and her children. And the entire city believes it was at the hands of the husband who survived. When Will investigates the tragedy, his only lead comes from Ann...
Starring: Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, Elias Koteas, Marton CsokasThriller | 100% |
Horror | 75% |
Mystery | 35% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: DTS 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
UV digital copy
DVD copy
BD-Live
D-Box
Mobile features
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 1.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Dream House came within a hair's breadth of being an Alan Smithee production. That's how horrified six-time Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America) was with the film producer James G. Robinson reportedly wrestled from his grasp and had recut, retooled and reassembled. Without final cut, though, Sheridan's only real course of action was to petition the Director's Guild to remove his name from the final product. When that didn't work, he took his protest public, this time with stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz by his side; the three of whom banded together and refused to promote the film in any way. The drama only seemed to intensify from there. A poorly conceived theatrical trailer shamelessly revealed House's mid-movie twist (which, in fairness, doesn't really come as much of a surprise anyway), and the eventual film was met with scathing reviews, disappointed at the box office, and proved to be the mangled monstrosity Sheridan, Craig and Weisz warned it would be. So how bad is bad? Honestly, I was riveted. Not because it was any good, mind you. Dream House is one of the worst movies of 2011; it's a clunky, fundamentally flawed, hopelessly disjointed mess that comes up short in every regard. And yet I couldn't shake the morbid but irresistible urge a person feels when passing by a gruesome thirteen-car pileup. Much as I wanted to, I simply couldn't look away.
"There's something out there..."
Dream House creeps onto Blu-ray with an at-times soft but always exacting 1080p/VC-1 encoded transfer that, through sickness and in health, till death do us part, stays true to Sheridan and cinematographer Caleb Deschanel's intentions. Craig and company look a little worse for the wear -- a bit pudgy and a bit smudgy, thanks to Deschanel's dreamscape photography, a variety of filters and, yes, some minor filmmaker-initiated DNR -- but skintones are beautifully saturated, primaries pop, blacks are deep and foreboding, and detail ranges from passable to satisfying. While fine textures are sometimes lost in the film's diffuse, sometimes murky atmosphere, edges remain clean and refined on the whole, a number of closeups are given the opportunity to flaunt their wares, and the subtlest shifts in Carol Spier's production design are showcased nicely. Moreover, significant artifacting, banding, aliasing, crush and other ghostly anomalies don't haunt the image, and slight noise spikes are about the only things that seem out of place. This may not be the final cut of the film Sheridan wanted audiences to see, but Universal's high definition presentation is faithful to his original vision.
Universal's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track isn't as absorbing as horror fans might expect. But, then again, Dream House isn't the terrifying frightfest or intense psychological thriller its trailer suggests. Like Craig's performance, the film is a quiet, almost somber affair; heavy on hushed conversation and light on sudden outbursts. The very beginning and very end stand out -- when Will first realizes someone is watching his family from the darkness and when he finally pulls back the curtain on the Ward family murders, respectively -- but only because these scenes loose John Debney's score, ratchet up the scare tactics, and flex their genre muscles. The LFE channel booms and the rear speakers shriek, allowing the mix to deliver some much-needed jolts and shivers. Not that either one is useless in other stretches of the film. Low-end output may be restrained, but it lends an ominous atmosphere to the proceedings. Rear speaker activity may be subdued, but transparent pans and devious directionality transforms the soundfield into the interior of the Atenton family dream house, infuses Sheridan's more stylized scenes with unsettling chaos and fitting uncertainty, and supports the film's already convincing soundscape regardless of how reserved the sonics become. Through it all, dialogue doesn't drift off course, save those intermittent instances when tinny ADR and thin voices cast an all-too-stark light on some of the seams of the post-Sheridan crew's patchwork edit. All things considered, Dream House's lossless audio mix doesn't disappoint, even when the film does.
It's easy to see why director Jim Sheridan wanted his name removed from the version of Dream House that landed in theaters. It's easy to see why Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz distanced themselves from the final product as well. What isn't so easy to see is what Sheridan's film might have been. Dream House is a mess, from top to bottom, and I can't imagine how it could have been much better, especially with that ending. Ugh. Still, there are fragments of a more fascinating character-driven genre pic lying everywhere, for those who are interested in searching them out, and curiosity will almost certainly keep you watching, if only to find out how far off the beaten path Robinson drags Sheridan's film. And while the scant few extras included on its Blu-ray release offer little insight into Sheridan's original vision, Universal's AV presentation makes watching Dream House less of a chore. My advice? Stick with renting this dilapidated shell of a psychological thriller and save your money for a movie that turned out the way its director intended.
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