Any future offspring Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz may one day fondly remember Dream House as the film that brought their parents together.
For everyone else, there’s little of lasting value in this supernatural potboiler. Daniel Craig is a father and husband who’s just quit his publishing job in order to spend more time with his gorgeous wife (Weisz) and happy children.
Their idyllic frost-dusted home looks like the inside of a snow globe and – also like the inside of a snow globe – their whole life takes place within a few metres’ radius of their garden fence.
Their bliss is interrupted, however, when bumps in the night lead to the discovery that their home was the scene of a grisly murder. The family begin to suspect a haunting – but who exactly is it?
If you’ve seen any publicity for Dream House , or watched any paranormal thriller before, you’ll already know exactly who. Luckily there’s a bit more to it than that, but it’s still disappointing that the key twist is both spelt out in the trailer and so derivative you’d likely have guessed it anyway.
The best moment involves one of the film’s leads (who also share the screen with next-door neighbour Naomi Watts) undergoing a radical, exciting change of character.
But it’s a U-turn that arrives too late. And after 40 minutes of laboriously teasing out a twist the trailer gave away in two, Dream House has already lost your interest.
In fact, the greatest mystery here is why and how six-time Oscar-nominee Jim Sheridan got involved in such a run-of-the-mill thriller. Then again, he did try to get his name removed from the credits.
