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The housewife Claire Cooper (Annette Bening) is married with the pilot Paul Cooper (Aidan Quinn) and their little daughter Rebecca (Katie Sagona) is their pride and joy. When a stranger kidnaps a girl, Claire dreams about the man but Detective Jack Kay (Paul Guilfoyle) ignores her concerns. But when Rebecca disappears during a school play, Claire learns that her visions were actually premonitions and she is connected to the killer through her dreams. She has a nervous breakdown and tries to commit suicide. Her psychologist Dr. Silverman (Stephen Rea) sends her to a mental institution and soon she finds that her husband will be the next victim of the serial-killer. Further, the serial-killer was interned in the same cell in the hospital where she is. Will Claire be able to save Paul?

"In Dreams" is a deceptive Neil Jordan's movie. The messy story is boring and Annette Bening is hysterical most of the time. There is no explanation for the connection between Claire Cooper and Vivian Thompson and the conclusion is terrible. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "A Premonição" ("The Premonition")

Neal Jordan has a most peculiar ability; he can make films which allow us to realize that he is a good director, without actually being good films. For some reason, he cannot film an ending to a movie and I don't understand why. He tends to deal with stories that have interesting premises, but don't actually go anywhere. I am not really sure why he does this, but he does. Look back at his filmography you will see what I mean. The only two films he made with good endings were The Butcher Boy and The Crying Game (you really can't screw up that ending), but even his best films (like Michael Collins) seem to fall apart as they are getting ready to wrap up. Build up and then disappointment.

Luckily, this is not a problem for In Dreams, which falls apart almost immediately. This film never comes close to generating a truly engrossing story or to establishing characters or situations that are even remotely plausible. I am normally able to suspend a tremendous amount of disbelief, but I just couldn't follow what was going on, or perhaps I was and it just wasn't interesting so I was trying to make up stuff to amuse myself.

I actually did not realize how bad the film actually is until I watched it a second time (being somewhat of a fan of Jordan's I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt). The movie is so scattered (and the end is sooooo lame) that it is impossible to even comment effectively on what the problems of the plot were. This reminded me of another of Jordan's films, A Company of Wolves, which had similar problems, but somehow managed to extricate itself from them at least partially (or perhaps I was more forgiving because of the incredibly low budget of the earlier film). A Company of Wolves was interesting and adult retelling of Little Red RidingHood, which despite its weirdness, managed to hold my interest through most of it.

This was not the case with In Dreams, whose weirdness overwhelmed any chance the film had of credulity. I love weird cinema, but weirdness needs to be used well in order to be effective. In Dreams is too wierd for no good reason and this sinks the plot and made me continue to view it as a movie rather than allow me to become engrossed in its story. Oh well, all that said, I have seen worse films.

Chey from Texas brought out all the best criticisms to which I would like to add:

where was grief for this child? Quinn cared more about the dog! How did Downey survive twenty years while being totally psychotic? which, by the way, was a totally unbelievable portrayal. I have worked at Norristown State Hospital, and they are not like this.

Please give me the preservative for the apples which survived 20 years without rotting or attracting legions of insects and other vermin. I like and admire fantasy / horror as much as the next guy but even a neophyte screenwriter knows that you must be true to your screen universe. Since the couple lived in the real world, that part of the movie fell completely apart due to its inconsistencies and breaches of continuity.

How did the connection between Downey and Bening start? From her illustrations in the book? I dont think she drew them as a child which is when she said her dreams began, the ending was great just as the premise was but it failed on many levels. definite thumbs down.

The first hour or so of this movie is great. It is interesting, good-viewing and imaginative.

It's a pity that after the hour mark the film looses so much effectiveness as it becomes ordinary and predictable. It's a shame that a little of the imagination shown in the first part of the film was not evident towards the end.

The film is 8/10 for the first hour, 5/10 for the rest. I feel it deserves 6/10 in total.

Apples, Apples, Apples, that's what everyone keeps saying about this film. Perhaps it was a little overdone, but did anyone ever stop to think that the apples were representative of Clair's fear. The apple, the most innocent of all things, a fruit, as the repository of one's own nightmares and fears is creepy enough in itself. Many regard the scene where Clair is frantically throwing apples from a pile on the cupboard into the garburator of the sink as funny. I didn't I was well enough into the film, that the moment actually felt creepy. Jordan's vicious left/right pans of the camera reinforced her feeling of panic or anxiety around the apples.

To mention a couple of the other good points about "In Dreams", there were a couple of ingenious cross cutting scenes created. The first is a cross cut sequence involving Clair who is now in the mental hospital and her husband who goes to the motel that she dreamed about to find the dog. Another wonderful cross-cut sequence involves the escape from the institution. In her dreams, Clair follows Vivian (who had spent time in the exact same room as Clair) out of the institution, and there is much cross-cutting between the past and the present. Much suspense was built in the production of this scene. I don't want to give away any of the ending, but trust me, it scared me lifeless. This is definitely not Neil Jordan's best work, certainly "The Crying Game" is his masterpiece, but nevertheless, this is an original horror suspense film that delivers a punch!