Dream Home

This film is a fresh, entertaining, stylish and beautifully staged gore fest. The bloody mainframe of the film's structure is accompanied by an interesting side-story that serves to justify all the bloodshed and also to provide some social commentary, but all this is secondary to the rivers of blood. And God saw it was good.

Ho-Cheung Pang's "Dream Home" proves that well-made genre pictures satisfy a basic human need: they can focus our attention, for a while, to a sequence of events that entertains because we know, roughly speaking, what to expect, what kind of experiences are in store for us. Well, Dream House is an honest splatter. Victims are lined up to be slaughtered in the most inventive ways for our viewing pleasure. But the film also has elements of human drama, and these two aspects - gore and drama - play each other in and out very well. The overall result is an impeccably paced, brutal but surprisingly uplifting story, beautifully shot against the backdrop of Hong Kong's endless arrays of high-rises and apartment blocks.

The main character, played by an air of focused innocence by Josie Ho, has been saving up to buy an apartment with a nice seaside view, and she is working very hard to realize her dreams. Then things don't go exactly as planned. Lots of drama ensues. People die. Blood is spilled.

There is nothing much more to the plot than a general arch to justify the gore, but it all works out very well, and doesn't feel dragged out or phony or needlessly second-rate; in fact, the acting in this film is actually quite good for the most part, with the exception of the actress who plays the main heroine: she is VERY good. In addition to the action, there is some merit to the drama itself. It carries some weight, or, at any rate, enough to make the film seem interesting all the while. None of the social commentary is especially realistic or intelligent, but the splatter format can function as a kind of primal scream therapy, and thus bring some aspects of our repressed social anxieties to the bloody daylight.

Finally, one aspect of the film deserves special attention: the cinematography, editing and directing. The shots are beautiful, symmetrical, rich in detail. Whether inside or outside, the camera captures some beautiful scenes (and, let us not kid ourselves here, some beautiful people). Each frame could almost work as a photograph; each outdoors vignette of Hong Kong cityscape is hauntingly beautiful; each spewing of blood is swiftly and surgically captured on the screen.

The script is tight and the acting is sufficient. The editing is inventive and the staging rich in detail. Even the drama succeeds in never becoming boring and no single scene, or theme, overstays its welcome. The director-writer Pang has given us a good splatter film which is also a good film even outside its (criminally under-appreciated and depreciated) genre. I was pleasantly surprised by the craft involved. Did I mention it's also funny? Just wait for the moment when the... oh, never mind, just go see this bloody film already.

Snap judgment: Rivers of blood make for bloody good entertainment.

Cheng Lai-sheung(Josie Ho)is desperate to buy a flat in the famed Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong.He works two jobs and is already in debt.Not enough money for her dream home prompts her to spill the blood of the rich."Dream Home" is one hell of a gory slasher.The killings are extremely vicious and insanely bloody.The murderous rampage of the main character leaves nothing to imagination.The cinematography is stylish,the acting is fantastic and the score provide some chills."Dream Home" paints an ugly side of corrupted society with some of the bloodiest murders ever captured on screen.8 blood sprays out of 10.A must-see for horror fans with an iron stomach.

On one hand, Dream Home is a poignant drama about a young Hong Kong woman's life of hardship and her dream of living in an apartment overlooking the bay; on the other, it's a gore-drenched tale of obsession and madness, the lady in question going to extreme and very bloody lengths in order to achieve her goal. As a whole, the film works brilliantly as a shocking slice of social satire on the difficulty of getting on the property ladder (although it's not as far fetched as it might seem: the film is apparently based on true events!).

Josie Ho plays Cheng Lai-Sheung, who, ever since she was a child living in a run-down high-rise, has longed to move with her family to No.1 Victoria Bay, an apartment block affording views of the sea. As the years pass, Josie saves every penny of her meagre wages, but loses both of her parents, yet still hangs on to her dream. So when the opportunity arises, she does whatever it takes to secure her dream home at an affordable price—by killing off the other inhabitants to drive down the property values.

The emotional drama is sensitively handled by director Ho-Cheung Pang, with touching flashbacks to a childhood friendship, Cheng's relationship with her ailing father, her unfulfilling job, and intimate moments shared with a married man, but for me, Dream Home is all about the gritty violence, which, along with the true-story connection, lends the film an atmosphere not unlike that of a classic Cat III movie. Pang certainly doesn't hold back when it comes to graphic unpleasantness, Cheng's victims suffering a variety of very grisly fates…

Victim number one, a security guard, is forced to slash his own jugular while trying to remove a plastic tie-wrap from around his throat; a pregnant woman is suffocated with a vacuum bag and her maid gets a screwdriver through her head (which emerges out of her eye!); the pregnant woman's husband breaks his neck in a brutal struggle with Cheng. The most outrageous scene of all takes place in an apartment occupied by some drugged up youths and a pair of whores: Cheng guts one guy, sticks a broken bottle into another's neck, bashes a hooker's face on a toilet bowl, repeatedly stabs a bloke and emasculates him while he is going at it with the other prostitute, and jams a broken piece of wood into the woman's mouth. When a pair of cops arrive to investigate the disturbance, Cheng gets the upper hand and shoots them both in the head!

Not since the Cat III heyday of Anthony Wong have I seen such relentlessly nasty slaughter in a HK movie.

Josie Ho plays a young woman desperate to own her own flat. She makes the perfect deal for her dream home, but then the owners decide that the property is too valuable to part with. Ho decides to take matters into her own hands and lower that property value - by killing the crap out of everyone who lives next door to that place. I've never quite seen anything like this. The structure, which moves back and forth in time, is a bit confusing at first, but it all comes together in the end. The film is most notable for its violence. These are some of the nastiest, most disturbing murders I've seen in a long time. I can't remember the last time I was actually shocked by a movie.

This movie caught my attention when it was reviewed by a friend of mine and I decided to give it a go and thankfully I did!!What can be said about "Dream Home" is that it's a very well done slasher movie with a fresh approach. I really loved this movie, what can I say! The basic story is a woman becomes so obsessed with buying a home with a view of the ocean she will go to any lengths to get that home....

I'm a huge fan of ultra violent horror movies and this one did not let down on that front by any means. But what really got me was the fresh ideas about a slasher/killer in this film. It wasn't the tired "crazed man follows stupid teens to a cabin" crap that gets turned out every week but a look at a seemingly normal person getting so obsessed with a dream that they will do anything and everything in their power to obtain that dream. Her performance was spot on and quite disturbing with kill scenes that made me cringe (which is very hard to do). Seriously, one of the greatest kill scenes I've seen in a movie this year! Do yourself a favor and check this out if you're into the slasher/killer genre. It won't be a waste of your time at the very least and you may just like it, maybe a lot!