Dream Home

Horrorphile

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Wai Dor Lei Ah Yut Ho (Dream Home)

June 16th 2010 01:07

Hong Kong writer/director Pang Ho Cheung has taken the gore-bull by the horns and delivered probably the goriest Asian feature since the 80s (if you exclude Takashi Miike’s Imprint). Dream Home (2010) is a no-holds-barred descent into controlled, depraved lunacy. This is one woman’s appalling determination to purchase her dream home, an apartment with an ocean view in uptown Victoria Bay, HK. These days that kind of acquisition can cost several million, and it’s relatively small in size (hmmm, sounds a little like Sydney real estate).

Josie Ho as Cheung Lai Sheung

Cheung Lai Shueng (Josie Ho) knows what she wants. Since a little girl she’s been dead-set on owning a choice apartment. She grew up in cramped conditions with her father and brother and watched as the working class area she lived in became developed into a wealthy neighbourhood. She believes it to be her right to continue to live where she grew up and to rise above the social limitations she was raised in. She was worked hard, even juggling two jobs, to save the money, never spending frivolously despite the temptations.

Cheung meets with her lover (Eason Chan)

She appears mild-mannered, even subservient. Her one regular escapade is an affair with a married businessman (Eason Chan) who doesn’t treat her very nicely, only arranging for urgent sex in one of the hundreds of tiny love hotels within the sprawling metropolis. But opportunity springs forth, and it looks like Cheung will finally get to sign off on the doted line and add “Dream Home” to her list of acquisitions. But something goes awry. And Cheung goes off the rails. And all hell breaks loose in the apartment building on Halloween night.

Director Pang Ho is a jack-of-all-trades, making movies in every genre. With Dream Home he tackles social satire with hardgore horror, but doesn’t hit the nail on the head; the tone of the movie slips and slides all over the place, as messy as the carnage wreaked by the protagonist/antagonist. The narrative of the movie jumps back and forth from the night of horror to the days leading up to it and much further back into Cheung’s childhood and young adult life in the 80s and 90s. There is pathos within the family scenes and tragic-comedy in the romance and office scenes, then full-blown absurdist black comedy and confronting ultra-violence during the scenes of Cheung’s rampage. It’s difficult to adjust to these swerves in tone, and it upsets the movie.

To make matters worse there are no likeable characters and there is an overt slickness to the whole movie that makes it feel like a heavily-stylised soap opera; unnecessary camera angles, a super-crisp digital look to the photography, but most jarring of all is the heavy-handed, overly emotive “Hollywood”-style score. However, the saving grace: the exploitation/horror stuff is superb. It’s as full-on gratuitous as any of the stuff coming out of France or Spain with a garroting, disemboweling, massive gun-shot wounds, dismemberment, and assorted knife wounds, and a particularly distressing dispatch of a pregnant woman. The combo of CGI and prosthetic work is impressive. Hell, the gorehounds will be salivating over this flick!

Sluts always get theirs

Pang Ho pulls out all the stops, including haphazard sexual shenanigans in one of the apartments that result in the movie’s main horror set-piece(s). This move is extreme. How the audience is meant to empathise with Cheung’s psychopathic behaviour is beyond me. Therein lies the rub. The director has chosen to highlight a genuine social problem, but his protagonist is shown very early on in full-blown psycho-mode, and as the flashbacks reveal her struggle the audience is meant to embrace her catharsis …?! It certainly makes for a rollercoaster ride, but it’s a shonky one, and not wholly satisfying. Cult status? More than likely.

NB: I'm unsure what the literal Cantonese translation of the original title is, if anyone can enlighten me I'd be grateful.

Here's the trailer:

127

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

4 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by JohnDoe

June 16th 2010 21:03

Film & TV on DVD

Your first paragraph sold me on this Bryn,

Didn't read more but will say that I have only seen Pang's "Exodus", which was enough to make me a fan of the goremeister.

Look forward to comparing note son this once I have a screening.

Comment by Bryn

June 16th 2010 22:52

Horrorphile

Cheers JD ... I'll hunt out Exodus.

Comment by David O'Connell

July 14th 2010 06:34

20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic

Will be checking this one out at MIFF Bryn. Your heads-up was all I needed. It looks unmissable despite its serious flaws. But damn - that Korean horror film didn't make the MIFF cut!