Chad

Undeadcow

Dream House is a film I've heard good things about and was pleased to see TheBigDave recommend so I could finally dig in. The potential for social commentary in horror is something I wish more films capitalized on, here some of the economic commentary is great but maybe too strong. It took me a while to realize the time jumps but the melodrama is really hammy in places, maybe necessarily so because they give the 'villain' an unique ethos (by making economic forces look even more evil than she is). This is a movie as much about her empowerment and capacity than about some of the epic gorey kills but it's a shame some of the apt commentary is targeted at random stoners or pregnant women (which is maybe part of the commentary, that the killer isn't really this woman but economic forces pushing us into a dog eat dog deathmatch). I really liked how the ending drew together a lot of the economic elements and seemed to move the film away from horror and towards a sort of healing or accounting with the new economic reality.

WillieMLF

I've seen this a couple of times now, and I've really warmed up to it. This was a really apt movie to watch when interest rates were lower, and home buying could illicit murderous intentions.

Spiderbite

I thought this was decent. It had some pretty outrageous kills. The fuck kill was hilarious after she splashed the blood on the girl, and then the chattering wood post kill...holy shit! It was also kind of refreshing that it was a woman doing all the killing as well. But like Ebola Syndrome, the majority of the movie seemed much too cartoonish to really be scary.

I agree with Undeadcow on the socio-political commentary being refreshing but also being a little too heavy handed on this.

Definitely worth the watch. Thank you alyxstar for the link. It appears this has disappeared from AMC+/Shudder.

My rating: *** out of *****

DaveyJoe

I'm assuming Cantonese is the original language? Was this shot with sync sound or all ADR?

numbercrunch

An asian slasher film on steroids. This film hits you immediately and doesnt stop. I also like the economic commentary.
8/10

jholmes

Not a big fan of this movie. The kills were so brutal and the film really lingers on them for too long. It's like modern films have to outdo all the films that came before in terms of being ever more graphic. And I think there's more power in leaving a little to the imagination. It does just get cartoonish. The non-linear timeline made it hard to figure out why tf the killer was doing all this, so it was hard to be invested in the characters at all. When we do learn the killer's backstory, I didn't really buy it (no pun intended). It was all "hammy" stuff, like UndeadCow says. Nothing was so tragic that it would lead to this kind of insanity. Plus, she even ends up killing her own father, so I'm not sure her desire for a "sea view" for his sake makes any sense. I suppose this is social commentary on lifestyle envy and greed, but it's so OTT.

Also -- did I miss it? It appears so was married at one point and had a son, but then we don't see him again. And what happened to her brother? She seems to be completely alone by the time she gets into the apartment.

Also also -- what a horrible job she had. If I had to do that for a living, I'd probably jump off that high rise.

Obi-Wanma

Caught this last night. It's not scary, but kills are absolutely brutal and had me squirming uncomfortably on several occasions. "Based on a true story" in the opening was funny. The true story of the housing market collapse, of course, lol.

I'd say that I enjoyed it for what it was, but I'm certainly not going to watch it again any time soon.

It's on Shudder under Amazon Prime (that's how I watched it), but finding it through the Prime app is brutal. It doesn't really come up when searching for the full title. It's not on the regular Shudder app at all.