Dream Home

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.

"Dream House" was somewhat of a great surprise. I love Hong Kong cinema and watch anything I can get my hands on. Though I wasn't familiar with "Dream House" prior to finding it by sheer random luck on Amazon, and decided to get it as it sounded interesting and was at an okay price.

And to make it all the more interesting, then the movie is based on true events that shook Hong Kong, and I got that confirmed from a friend living there, so it wasn't just something that was flaunted in the movie to make it more interesting - there was some truth behind it.

The story in "Dream House" is about Cheng Lai (played by Josie Ho) who has been saving money her entire life to buy her own dream apartment, a home of her own. She is living with her family, which is normal in Hong Kong, up until you get married, usually. Things seem to sort themselves out for her, except that the sellers raise the price, and other people are interested in the one and only specific apartment she wants. Cheng Lai sanity flickers and she is driven to inhuman actions.

"Dream House" was driven by a great story that sweeps you up and takes you along for a great ride. Plus it was really well acted, and it was mostly Josie Ho who pulled the weight. I, personally, do not care much for Eason Chan (playing Siu To) and his acting skills (or lack thereof).

The movie is filmed in a great way that makes it come off as right in your face, almost as if you were right there with the actors. Plus the camera work really helped the movie along as well, especially when Cheng Lai was having a breakdown on the street. That scene was just so amazingly nice.

And as a major plus, for all gorehounds out there, then there is a rather good amount of gore and really good effects in the movie, which makes it well worth checking out for the mayhem alone. I was impressed with some of the scenes. And I will say this, without giving away anything here; the scene with the pregnant tenant and her maid was one of the most brutal and graphically disturbing scenes I have seen in a long, long time. That really got my attention, as I had never expected that kind of graphic violence in this movie.

If you enjoy Hong Kong cinema, then you definitely should treat yourself to this movie, as it is a rather unique addition to the collection of Hong Kong cinema.

I sort of see Dream Home as a thinking man's slasher. What I mean by that is that it's a slasher film with a point, as it contains all the outlandishly kills from famous slashers like Friday the 13th (it probably goes further actually) but all the excessive blood and violence has a point, and a very valid point about the current house market in Hong Kong. Dream Home is also supposedly based on true events, I don't know how many of the events are true but I'm guessing not that many! Still, it illustrates the point of the film further as the age old issue of money has seriously taken its toll!

Dream Home has an interesting structure which I don't know if it entirely worked. You see it cross cuts from her current murder spree to her past, including early childhood, right up to the events that led her to do it. In its favour it did add a nice layer of mystery to the film, and also helped to balance out the drama-heavy scenes with the horror-heavy scenes, allowing us to take a break from the last gruesome massacre and look forward to how it's all going to pan out! However, I can't help but wonder if the film would've been stronger having the events be shown in chronological order. It may have built the suspense and the final killing spree would've been doubly intense! It certainly worked for May, although the characters were much stronger in that than they are here. It's an interesting thought, but I'm satisfied with the unusual cross-cuts.

Now horror fans are not going to be disappointed with the horror-heavy scenes! Dream Home showcases some of the most inventive kills I've seen on screen for a long time. Some of them are also quite heavy to watch, by that I mean distressing, which makes us feel less empathy for the character, making her well rounded. However, I think there could've been more evidence of her snappy psychological state in the past as she doesn't appear violent until she suddenly snaps. It does seem a bit over the top, but I suppose we can forgive it. There's plenty of blood and not only that, some scenes were actually quite suspenseful and thrilling rather than just a simple slash and dash.

The drama-heavy scenes are also not as boring as I've labelled them. I found it really interesting to find out how she got so fixated on that apartment she wanted, and her journey getting her. They really help to flesh out the character further so we can feel for her and her motives (occasionally). However, I also think that a little background on her victims could've been nice as well, so we get to see them as humans too rather than just prey to feed off! The film is also beautifully shot and directed which I didn't expect. There's some lovely cinematography of the high-rise buildings which could also be metaphorical as it seems so out of her reach!

Dream Home is a highly successful slasher and one that I'd be happy to revisit again. It doesn't hold back and also brings up various themes which have a place in today's society. I really enjoyed its entertaining violence and strong character build-up. You do care what happens to her in the end and it also makes a refreshing change to have a slasher film from the killer's point of view. I'd definitely go and check this one out as it doesn't seem that a lot have!

This is pretty awesome for what it is. Remember CATIII films from some twenty years ago? The most gruesome violence, a seamy social underbelly, usually a plot involving revenge and some terrible crime spree; bleak, nihilistic, amoral affairs of a world abandoned to the most deviant whims and sexual appetites. On at least the matter of violence, this one is a slick return to splatterfests of yore. There is no body part that isn't horribly mangled in some way. The pregnant woman isn't spared. Police don't save the day when they show up. There is no safe moral center to pivot around.

This part works, is senselessly brutal and exciting. But every now and then we veer off into extensive childhood flashbacks meant to contextualize and explain. Backstory is gradually pieced together from that direction that allows us to discern pattern in yawning madness, minutely calculated obsession. Every wild stabbing of the knife is gradually imbued with purpose.

The idea on the part of the filmmakers was probably that this was drama and human interest that would trouble how we handled violence from our end. The shift in tone would unsettle: here is a perfectly innocent young girl, and on the other end a raging psychopath.

This would grace the whole with some complexity, even respectability. The film would not be easy to dismiss but would recast aimless slaughter as greater social consequence. We learn for example that government and land proprietor thugs are ousting poor tenants from their shabby apartment blocks, in order to flatten them and build luxurious high-rise towers in their place. Prices artificially skyrocket. This is brought full circle in the end with the first news as of '08 of the coming global economic crisis. The problem is this is not handled in terribly interesting ways. It's shoe-horned at the end of a bloodbath for some weight but only drags the superficial pleasures down.

So we just learn stuff someone presumed we would need to know. The whole is tied into something someone presumed would be relevant to us all. It is but I'd rather get this part from a newspaper. A newspaper doesn't have excellent gore. So every minute spent away from cartoonish carnage and into hamfisted drama and social commentary is a minute lost for me.

Being from Hong Kong, the makers perhaps felt it was their part to address all this. Perhaps the ire is honest and comes from experience. But as far as a horror film goes, I'm surprised they allowed the lesson of A L'Interieur go wasted: brutality even more sharpened by complete awareness of the present moment.

Still, it's pretty awesome for what it is. It just means we'll have to concentrate on what was clearly poured into the most effort; the slick, ultraviolent slasher film.

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.