Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
11/6/11
While
short story writers and Rod Serling have played the game for generations,
modern moviegoers tend to imagine that The Twist originated with M. Night
Shayamalan’s The Sixth Sense. We all know the game, the filmmakers
carefully set everything up to hide an obvious fact in plain sight, one
that upon a second viewing one can’t help but slap themselves silly at
their folly at having missed. Of COURSE Bruce Willis is Dead:
while it always seems that people are talking TO him, they’re really just
talking NEAR him. But that sort of sleight of hand is harder to pull
off than one might think, and an excellent case in point is Jim Sheridan’s
Dream House, a movie so in debt to its own perfectly adequate twist
that it can’t manage to create a believable reality in which we can await
the shocking revelations in question. You can see where all the mistakes
were made: “No, we can’t make her actions make sense, because then
you’d guess what she knew and when she knew it!” “Sure, nobody would
do what he does, but he needs to be at point X at moment Y or we can’t
hide the true nature of what he’s up to!” And while Dream House
does sport a strong cast and a few snappy moments after its cards are finally
on the table, this is exactly the kind of movie that makes so many people
spit on Shayamalan’s name even though he had nothing to do with it.
Book
editor Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) retires from his job and moves his family
into an idyllic small-town home. He, wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and
daughters Trish (Taylor Geare) and Dee Dee (Claire Geare) literally could
not be happier, at least until odd events start to pile up. A mysterious
person is watching from the shadows, and the family starts to discover
the possessions of the house’s previous occupants lying around. Will
finds teenagers having a séance in the basement and learns what
everyone else in town already knew: the family that had lived in
the house previously was viciously murdered by the father Peter Ward, who’s
now in a mental institution. He gets a curiously cold shoulder from
the local police and Ann (Naomi Watts), who lives across the street with
her daughter Chloe (Rachel Fox). They’re terrorized themselves by
Ann’s belligerent ex Jack (Marton Csokas). Will decides he’ll never
get to the bottom of this mystery without paying a visit to the institution
where Peter is held. He’s not going to like what he finds there.
The
revelations that come next might come as quite a surprise if you haven’t
seen the trailer or read the first two words of the insanely expository
plot synopsis on Wikipedia, but it won’t be long before Dream House
is being viewed by people entirely unspoiled, and even then it’s fundamental
problems will remain because they’ve got nothing to do with spoilers.
But it is worth wondering, since the production company (Morgan Creek,
with whom Sheridan clashed so aggressively he reportedly attempted to have
his name removed from the credits) felt the need to give the movie’s Big
Twist away in the trailer, why anyone felt a Big Twist served the movie
at all, since an interesting plot is mostly suffocated under attempts to
hide it. Simply put, no one would behave the way the movie’s characters
do were they not concealing a secret or perceiving the world differently
than how it actually is. As such, one can only take note of what
they’re seeing in anticipation of running it all through the Twist Reconciler
2000 after all the cards are on the table rather than actually getting
involved in the story. It doesn’t help that the “spooky” events that
build up to said Twist are not really all that spooky, and Dream House
plays a lot more like a crime thriller than a horror movie, making its
desperation to keep secrets all the more inexplicable.
The
Big Twist is interesting, and a secondary Twist that comes during the climax
even more so. And some of the scenes that are so offputting when
they occur (like the utterly bizarre levels of happiness Will shares with
his family when he first arrives home) do make a certain amount of sense
in retrospect. But the magic that makes a Twist Movie work just isn’t
here, and without it we’re left with a movie about a town that would board
up a condemned house and then let its owner sleep on the lawn all night.
Craig
is perfectly intense in the role, although he’s not an actor who tends
to inspire a lot of easy empathy. This would make him a perfect choice
for a well-mounted Twist movie, because he can keep you at arm’s length
guessing what he’s up to. But with a movie as weird and off-putting
as Dream House initially is, a less talented and more inviting presence
probably would have worked better. Weisz, usually the perfect love
interest (and striking enough sparks with Craig on the set that they secretly
married after the shoot), is oddly off her game here, being really insistent
about enunciating her way through a troublesome American accent.
Watts can only keep a poker face the whole time because her character is
virtually unable to speak a word without giving up the game. Csokas
is memorably odious, and Fox has a terrific scene with Craig after most
of the movie’s cards are on the table.
And
Dream House does improve considerably once the Twists start coming:
the climax is pretty engaging and quite clever in the way the Twist doubles
back on itself as a supernatural version of “just because you’re paranoid
doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you”. But by then it’s only possible
to be so connected to the whole enterprise. And don’t get me started
on my least favorite kind of final shot (any movie ordeal is apparently
worth going through if it allows you to write a best-selling book).
Don’t get me wrong, Dream House isn’t a horrible movie by any stretch,
but it’s not all that great either, particularly at being what it sets
out to be. And there’s no kind of bad movie that inspires more bellyaching
than a bad Twist Movie, so if you’re one of those folks who likes to catalog
complaints, well, this IS the movie for you. |
