Dream House is advertised as a film about a family that moves into house where a family is murdered and the father slowly goes crazy. This seems reminiscent of The Amityville Horror, but is actually pretty far from the premise of the movie. Overall, Dream House is not a bad film. It is one of the many films nowadays, however, that get the unfortunate classification of being horror movie when it's not. It is quite obvious that the marketing department did not watch the film and used the few scenes in the film that appeared scary in the trailer in order to capitalize on the October 1^st release date. This is not an exaggeration; every scene that could remotely be used to present this film as a ghost story was used.

While this film fails horribly as a horror film, but succeeds fairly well as a psychological thriller. Viewers will spend much of the time trying to guess what will happen next, although the ending is fairly predictable. Daniel Craig does a fairly decent job of maintaining two personalities throughout the film. He is supported by Naomi Watts, who plays his neighbor, and Rachel Weisz, who plays his wife. Naomi Watts' character seemed unsure of herself, but that sort of fits with the character. Rachel Weisz's character was similar, but she wound up coming across as a helpless, scared housewife. The did get irritating to some degree, since every time there was a problem, her response was almost always “Will/Daddy will make it better.” There could be some reasoning for this, but without giving away the plot, it can not be discussed here.

Plot wise, the film is pretty good. The pacing is a little slow to start, but does pick up. There are some scenes that seem out of place, but make sense later on. Fans of films such as Memento and The Number 23 will most like enjoy this film. Anyone expecting a story similar to The Amityville Horror, however, will be disappointment.

- DJ Creepiz