Dream House

It's October and Halloween is around the corner! As usual, many thriller/horror films will be hitting theaters throughout the month and the first one to be released is the psychological thriller, "Dream House". From the creepy music, the eerie house, and the two little girls featured in the somewhat freaky trailers, "Dream House" looks like a promising thriller that will be sure to blow your mind. But after seeing it, that spark of great story telling never quite hit the dynamite.

Will Atenton (Daniel Craig) has decided to leave the big city of New York to move to a more quiet town so that he can write his new novel in a more peaceful environment. He moves with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and two daughters to a seemingly lovely home, but they begin to take notice of the wary neighbors and the signs in the basement that speak of gruesome murders that took place in their house. With more and more whispers that the mysterious murderer, Peter Ward, is on the loose, Will must find out the truth about what dark events took place in his house and how he can prevent them from happening again.

The biggest problem with "Dream House" began long before the film was released. When the first trailer was released, the film makers thought it would be clever to include a little something special to get people excited. What was that little something special? Nothing much, just the...BIGGEST SPOILER ALERT OF THE FILM! In the rare case that anyone reading this article has not seen the advertisements for this film I will refrain from giving away the spoiler but believe me...it's big. Shortly after the trailer was released, the director of the film told the press that even though a seemingly big spoiler was shown in the advertisement, there would be way more that we weren't expecting. Well the thing is...he's wrong. There is no more. If you see the trailer there is nothing else to surprise you, and it ends up giving the entire film away.

Because of this major advertising flaw, "Dream House" ends up being incredibly predictable (even if you don't know the twist). This leads to the film dragging out from beginning to end and not once does it do a successful job of drawing in the viewer. Adding to its predictability is the fact that "Dream House" simply takes elements from other great thrillers (saying the names could give away the ending) but fails to craft them together in a new and creative way.

As for the overall scare/suspense factor, the film also fails. The trailers play up the eeriness too much making the final result more disappointing. Because of the film's predictability, suspense is absent and the plot is much more humorous than scary, and not in a good way.

I should have know from the poorly thought out marketing campaign that "Dream House" would be a disappointment. But I had faith that the film would throw something even more unexpected in my face to impress me. I was wrong. Predictable, unoriginal, and void of all suspense, "Dream House" lurks in the shadows of the great psychological thrillers of our time. I give it one star out of four.

"Dream House" has a running time of 92 minutes and is rated PG-13 for violence, terror, some sexuality and brief strong language.