Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Absolutely Fantastic

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The actress in lead was just great .i thought this was just another slasher with some gore ,chasing,hide and seek scenes. But it wasn't . story revolves around a girl who do anything for accomplishing something she wanted for a long time .The way she chooses for achieving it is mysterious .yes

A second viewing of this slasher / drama. The combination of the two elements aforementioned still don't work perfectly to my taste, but I enjoyed it more than the first time. It helped that the storyline, with all its shifting back and forth in time, became clearer to me this time, and thusly had a greater impact.Josie Ho is a fine actress and knows how to underplay a definite psycho. The background of her character is worked out well, based on true facts of the practice of rich people forcing out home owners in Hong Kong in the '80s. The moment when she lets her grandfather die, partly because he betrayed her trust, is a pivotal moment to somehow stay on her side as a viewer - although it should not be missed that there is a lot of awfully dark humour in here, as well. And that humour makes it so that the gore (very well worked out, but not easy to stomach - pun intended?) has its rightful place here, too. Altogether, this is a weird one, and it will certainly not be for everyone. It may never be a favorite of mine, either, but the ingredients are separately very effective in any case.From 6 to 7 out of 10.

There are two main threads. In flashbacks, we follow Sheung's growing up in Hong Kong, from 1991 to the present, 2008 in this case. We see why, ten times over, she wants a nice flat to live in with what's left of her family. In the 'current' thread, we see to what lengths she goes to get to that difficult goal.In the current thread, she's on a mission to kill certain people. The murders that she has planned for she executes well, and seldom gets hurt in the process. It's the extra killings she does out of irritation that get her into trouble. Loud music sets her off, as explained in the flashbacks. While finishing up her planned murders, she's annoyed by music from a nearby flat. She ends up killing five people to make it stop. Then the cops show up.A running commentary is made through many characters: infidelity is rampant, as is the brutality of humans toward one another. Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the infidelity, it still engenders hard feelings that sometimes have very bad results. Her married lover is not all that great a choice for her.Her father's illness due to persistent aspiration of asbestos fibers (he was in construction) was set against the coldness of the insurance company. Again, money limits caused large, painful problems in her life.Sheung comes to quite a decision point when her father is in a crisis with his breathing. She lets him die. He was bankrupting her, after all, and he had insurance. Through working a couple of jobs, plus collecting the insurance money, she scrapes together enough money to get the flat she wants. Unfortunately, the seller made other arrangements while she was getting ready.This is the spark for the killings mentioned above. By a set of favorable outcomes (dumb luck, that is) the cops die as she's being handcuffed. The seller of her target flat not only is willing to sell to her, but drops the asking price from 6.5 million USD to 4.9 million. She demands 3.9 million.Will her exceptional luck continue?-----Conclusions----Like Caterpillar, Dream Home is much scarier than most fake gore films with supernatural themes. In terms of visuals and sound, this is one of the most gorgeous movies I've seen in years.-----Scores------Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.Sound: 10/10 Amazingly good, rich, evocative for this tale of obsession.Acting: 9/10 Steady and good.Screenplay: 9/10 The well-crafted story was about a difficult subject. The director and actors did well together executing the script.

"Dream Home" has been a title I've been waiting to watch since it's release. Most reviews I had read pinned it as a "darkly hilarious" satirical horror film with high levels of style and gore. The style and gore are there alright, but as far as humor is concerned, I was a little let down. The film does have it's quirks and witty lines, not to mention a few "so-bad-it's-good" effects, but it didn't quite live up to the reputation that I had known it for. That being said, the film is shot beautifully and uses a wide variety of creative shots and transitions. It plays with the time-line well and develops Cheng's character at a very nice pace. Many of the deaths are drawn out and disturbing, which would make this a difficult film to watch if the effects were done with more care. Some over-the-top gore may be humorous to some, but in using characters that the audience can relate to, it is more easily said to be horrific. All in all, though it fell a little short of the hype I've been hearing, "Dream Home" is a must for any Chinese or Asian horror fans!