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
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