Dream Home

Written and Directed by Ho-Cheung Pang. Also written by Ho-Cheung Pang, Kwok Cheun Tsang and Chi-Man Wan. Starring Josie Ho (Chen Lai - Sheung).

Bottom Line: Dream Home is a violent, political and refreshing slasher which I recommend if you are in the mood for, well, a dark, violent, political movie. Think The Host (2006) but a slasher.
3/4




I must say, I am not much of a scary movie person. My problem is my imagination. You know what you are supposed to do (or at least what I've heard you can do) when you see a scary movie? You say, "that isn't scary," then you think about all the ways the movie is silly. My problem is that, instead, I think "that isn't scary....now this would be scary" and I proceed to think of how the movie could've been scary.

I also try to think about how I would act if I should find myself in a horror movie situation. Let's say I'm in the shower. I close my eyes to wash my face. You know what is going to happen: I am going to open my eyes; the Chinese demon-child is going to be right behind me. What can a guy do in that situation? My first inclination is a swift kick in the face. At least if I try to fight, the whole ensuing death will be over quicker than if I tried, ineffectually,  to run away, right?

At this point, I feel like a reasonable person would just stop imagining. He or she would laugh at the decision of "kick to the face" and move on with cleaning. But "No", my imagination says. It is one thing to imagine myself responding to a spectral threat like Chuck Norris but it is another to put it into practice. For the life of me I don't know how I manage it but I mentally prepare myself to see a demon-child in front of me (not before imaging the most terrifying appearance, of course). The anticipation of simply opening my eyes is as bad (or worse) than which was created by the movie in the first place! It is exhausting.

This is why I am not too keen on watching scary movies, at least, ones about ghosts and demons. Slashers are a little more manageable. At the moment, I live in an apartment and I stay in a lot of hotels: i.e. there are a lot more potential victims between me and the killer. On top of that, horror movies, in general, and Slasher movies, specifically, try to make the villain somewhat sympathetic. If it is done really well, the horror is taken out of the movie, in a way. To find oneself siding with the murderer could be a different type of horror.

Dream Home follows Chen Lai - Sheung (Josie Ho); a woman living in Hong Kong, working two jobs (a bank worker and an imported leather purse saleswoman) while caring for her aging father. She is saving up to buy a flat in the expensive high-rise across the street from her current residence.

After the tag line 'to survive in this crazy city...you have to be more crazy', the movie opens with a graphic murder of a security guard. It is a grim beginning of things to come. It isn't in the Saw type torture-porn but it still doesn't mess around: I am used to a short time frame for seeing a character strangled and Dream House adds a solid five to ten seconds to a strangulation shot. The shot holds a little longer than it takes to make one uncomfortable. This is one of the reasons I like Dream House. The temptation to indulge in the violence is stripped away by the brutality. At the same time, it is really easy to sympathize with Chen Lai. I wanted to learn more about Lai to see her motivations. I didn’t think “why is she doing such horrible things” rather, “what made her act this way”. The blame isn’t put on her. It is put on the system that caused all of this.

Dream House is a very pretty movie. The opening credits, for example, look like they are reflected on the clean windows of an apartment building. Standard shots look fresh. One shot comes to mind; Chen is emotionally broken from stress and the camera is focused on her. She moves but because the camera is locked to her so only the background moves. It is disorienting to the viewer which matches her mental state. This shot has been used a million different times but the color and saturation make it different and somehow new. The movie is broken up into different segments of different time periods revealing more and more about the protagonist. This is also nothing new but it is done in a pleasant fashion.

I mentioned how the movie is highly political. It reminds me of The Host (2006). If you have never seen it, it is based on the real life events of a laboratory was found dumping chemicals into a huge river. In the movie, the chemicals result in a giant monster. It goes on to comment about foreign influence in the national politics. So, in the case of Dream Home, we open with text explaining the obscene cost of owning real estate in Hong Kong. We watch mobster run housing corporations manipulate the system to build expensive high rise. There is more to be said about it but I don't really want to haphazardly get into a discussion about economics (because I don't know very much about the subject). One thing that I will say is that the attention to commentary gives the movie a distinct purpose and direction.

The acting, story and cinematography make Dream Home a film I highly recommend. Check it out, if you are in the mood for a beautiful, super violent Slasher movie.