Film: Dream Home Release date: 28th March 2011 Certificate: 18 Running time: 96 mins Director: Pang Ho-cheung Starring: Josie Ho, Michelle Ye, Eason Chan, Lawrence Chou, Norman Chu Genre: Horror Studio: Network Format: DVD Country: Hong Kong
In this age of economic turmoil, it has never been harder to get on to the property ladder, yet for many this is a benchmark in measuring our success. As we find ourselves in more and more debt, the distance to the first rungs of real estate can seem out of reach. Dream Home is a Hong Kong slasher that will make anyone question whether it is a leap that is worth taking. It is also a movie that shows us that the economic crisis is exactly the same on the other side of the world, and also satirises the obsessive nature of global consumerism. Dream Home takes things a fair bit further than similar ventures such as American Psycho, and is definitely not for the faint hearted. Josie Ho stars as Cheng Li-sheung, a young professional who has spent more than a decade dreaming about a nice, although not extravagant apartment with a sea view. She works hard and saves money, but no matter how much she has saved, it is never enough to afford the mortgage for her dream home. Every time she gets close, the market changes and the price goes up.
Cheng becomes increasingly desperate to get what she wants for her family, which is simply a home big enough to house them. The apartment in question is the same apartment that she has wanted since childhood, and the dream becomes an obsession. As the obsession spirals out of control, she comes up with an idea to bring down the property value by means of a murderous scheme…
Dream Home is a story that is told by means of a non linear narrative that mostly takes place over one night, with flashbacks to various events in Cheng Li-sheung’s past, which explains her motivations. This makes for interesting viewing, since rather than American Psycho’s very linear narrative, where we see the monster emerge from a human, we instead begin with the monster and are then shown the human side, which allows us to partly identify and understand the character in between the evil and abject deeds. This makes Dream Home far more than an exploitative and empty series of gory set pieces.
This is a character-based film, and its success is based largely around the central performance. Josie Ho, who also produced the movie, is a seasoned Hong Kong actress, and has many titles under her belt. Her performance in Dream Home reinforces the style of storytelling, with a portrayal that is both cold, calculating killer and desperate dreamer.
Fetishism is rampant throughout Dream Home, with frequent close ups on household items, such as vases, cups, glasses and window frames, which linger in the foreground, obscuring the characters and their conversations. There are also a wide range of household items being used as weapons by Cheng Li-sheung, like furniture slats, nails, vacuum cleaners, kitchen knives and cable ties (to name but a few!). The way in which these domestic goods are fetishised delicately emphasises Cheng Li-sheung’s obsession with her dream apartment, and even during flashbacks to her childhood, we are reminded of her omnipresent fixation.
The burden of debt and financial stress is also a constant theme throughout the film. Cheng Li-sheung works for a credit card company, desperately selling cards and loans to people who cannot afford them in order to meet targets and keep her job. She has constant meetings with her bank manager about her mortgage. There are also health bills and insurance claims, personal lending from boyfriends, and the constant pressure to simply maintain repayments.
The other strong thematic point that shines through is that of the family unit. This is something which in China and much of Asia holds far more importance than here in the west. Without giving too much away, Cheng Li-sheung starts out wanting a home for her family. Her main motivation is not personal, but for the greater good of her family unit. She even chooses the apartment based on criteria that will satisfy her parents. By the time she begins to really fixate on the apartment, this overrides her family need, and it gradually becomes an entirely stubborn personal motivation.
Gore and violence are, of course, central to any slasher film, and Dream Home has lots of it on offer. The most difficult scene to watch involves the murder of a pregnant woman and the resulting miscarriage. This is rather extreme, but serves to illustrate the level of the killer’s psychosis and mania. There are some brilliantly choreographed scenes, where you really couldn’t guess the outcome until it has happened, and even then find yourself in a state of disbelief.
Despite the narrative distortion and a little bit of expressionistic Snorricam and rapid montage, the general aesthetic is a very clinical realism. Much of the lighting used is either soft lighting or a slight blue hue, which, at times, is very reminiscent of other Asian slasher classics such as Freezer or Audition. The first few shots of the initial scene in fact trick the viewer into thinking it is set in a morgue rather than a security office. The main effect that this realistic and clinical look has is to give extra gravity to the main feature: the violent acts being carried out by a deranged psychopathic woman.
Dream Home is an extreme thrill ride and satire, with some rare attention being given to character development and explanation that, for many, will make it an instant classic. It has several intricate sequences that unleash buckets of gore in new and original ways, and will put the frighteners into any respectable property owner, so be warned! DOB
Be prepared for a goretastic orgy of blood, guts and stomach-churning horror in the highly stylish, original and brutal property market satire, Dream Home.
Thirty-something Cheng Lai-Sheung (Hong Kong rock chick turned actress Josie Ho) is the daughter of a dying builder. She sells home loans by phone during the day and works as a sales assistant in ladies’ fashion stores in the evenings, in the hope of one day being able to buy her dream home in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. But when she finally has enough money for the deposit, the owners decide to raise the price, and something delicate finally snaps in Cheng.
Armed with only household DIY equipment and construction tools, and with ever more imaginative usage of them, she sets about ensuring that she acquires the property, come what may.
Told through an intricate series of flashbacks, Dream Home will appeal to gore lovers and art house move-goers alike, with many elaborate killings and a deliciously dark sense of humour running throughout the film. A chilling satire on the housing and economic crisis affecting Asians, the subject matter will also resonate with people trying to buy homes in the UK.
This release is packaged with a 2,000 word booklet by Bizarre film critic Billy Chainsaw about the film’s significance and contribution to the slasher genre and place in Asian cinema.
Film: Dream Home Release date: 28th March 2011 Certificate: 18 Running time: 96 mins Director: Pang Ho-cheung Starring: Josie Ho, Michelle Ye, Eason Chan, Lawrence Chou, Norman Chu Genre: Horror Studio: Network Format: DVD Country: Hong Kong
DVD Special Features:
• Josie Ho interview on the making of Dream Home filmed in London in 2010
• Image gallery
• Theatrical trailer
Film: Dream Home Release date: 19th November 2010 Certificate: 18 Running time: 96 mins Director: Pang Ho-cheung Starring: Josie Ho, Anthony Wong Chau-sang, Michelle Ye, Eason Chan, Norman Chu Genre: Horror Studio: Network Format: Cinema Country: Hong Kong
Morbid new offering from director Pang Ho-Cheung has actress Josie Ho stopping at nothing to get her foot onto the (literally) deadly Hong Kong property market.
Set in the early days of the global financial crisis, actress and musician Josie Ho plays Sheung, a long suffering young woman forced to work two menial jobs in order to support her family. Her current living situation is reminiscent of many young Asian adults, forced to share her childhood home (a cramped and dilapidated flat in a high-rise tower) with her aging parents and brother.
The only real pleasure Sheung seems to get out of life is fantasising about moving into a prestigious block of flats overlooking the plush Victoria Harbour, a dream she has had since childhood. However, along the way a series of unrelenting estate agents, surly mortgage lenders, and heartless insurance salesmen all threaten to derail her dream.
Eventually, when she finally manages to scrape together the money for a deposit, her offer is rejected, causing her to go on a murderous rampage inside the building…
The film is not alone in its cynical and negative depiction of the property market. Earlier in 2009, Dwelling Narrowness (also known as Snail House), a highly popular television drama set in a fictional city similar to Shanghai, was banned in mainland China for tackling issues such as corruption, poverty and the real estate bubble. Although Dream Home focuses on the Hong Kong property market, themes such as regeneration, urbanisation and gentrification are universally relevant to most city-dwellers. Whilst it does not directly address the causes of such issues, the film highlights the commodity fetishism attached to the property market, and questions the idealised image of the ‘perfect’ home.
In many senses, this is not a conventional horror film. The killer is not a supernatural monster or a depraved maniac, but a relatable young woman. Her murders are carefully planned out, born out of a twisted desire to help her family, and her victims are always morally bankrupt individuals, undeserving of their wealth. However, one area where the film fails is the explanation for how normal, relatable desires can motivate an individual to commit, abnormal, psychotic acts of murder. Even though it delves into her background to some extent, the connections are tenuous, and not explored deeply enough, making the film simply unbelievable and a little silly at times. The ending of the film is also more than predictable, and provides a somewhat obtuse and crude moral to be gleaned from all the violence.
Nevertheless, any fans of horror will undoubtedly revel in the spectacularly gruesome death scenes the film has to offer. But this is not a typical Hollywood slasher film by any means. From the opening scene in which our protagonist disposes of a security guard using only a plastic tie and a Stanley knife, the violence is always brutal and shocking. Perhaps to show Sheung’s inexperience when it comes to killing, the murders are unbearably drawn-out, accompanied by agonising long shots of the disembodied victims writhing around on the floor.
Moreover, the tools she uses are household objects, making the deaths even more gruesome and slow due to their ineffectiveness as murder weapons. Whereas conventional Hollywood films would have already cut to the next scene or victim, the camera in Dream Home lingers on the struggling body of the victim, with only the sound of their last gasps of air punctuating the silence. The sadistic voyeurism of the cinematic gaze is undoubtedly present here.
Towards the end of the film, the violence becomes almost comical, with one victim disembowelled and another castrated. It does beg the question, would the film have worked better if had just been a gritty, well-acted drama about Sheung’s life instead. There isn’t anything that intrinsically links the property market to the horror genre, so, at times, the violence feels slightly forced, shoehorned in just to make the subject matter more interesting. Or that perhaps, to some degree, the violence detracts from whatever social commentary the film is trying to make, making it appear cheap and tacky. Whatever the answer, the concept of a ‘real estate slasher’ is peculiar, and Dream Home doesn’t quite manage to get the right balance of tongue-in-cheek satire, realism and horror in one mix.
An unconventional slasher film that isn’t sure whether it wants to offer serious social commentary on modern living and consumerism, or play it for laughs, yet it still manages to entertain with its enjoyable, gory violence. KW
A satirical film about the ‘cut-throat’ property market in Hong Kong.
Josie Ho stars as thirty-something Cheng Lai-sheung, the daughter of a dying builder. She sells home loans by phone in the day and works at a sales assistant in a fashion store in the evenings in the hope of one day being able to buy her dream home in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. But when she finally has enough money for the deposit, the owners decide to raise the price. This sends her over the edge, and she embarks on a serial-killing rampage using only household and construction items to slay her prey.
Told through an intricate series of flashbacks, Dream Home will appeal to gore lovers and art house move-goers alike, with many elaborate killings. A chilling satire on the housing and economic crisis affecting Asians, the subject matter will also resonate with people slaving away in the hope of getting on the property ladder in the UK.
They wouldn’t slash the price, so she slashed them up!
Film: Dream Home Release date: 19th November 2010 Certificate: 18 Running time: 96 mins Director: Pang Ho-cheung Starring: Josie Ho, Anthony Wong Chau-sang, Michelle Ye, Eason Chan, Norman Chu Genre: Horror Studio: Network Format: Cinema Country: Hong Kong
