jadavix In its own small way, "Dream Home" could be one of the stranger Category III movies from Hong Kong.Sure, there's no black magic turning people's heads into penises, nor centipedes crawling in and out of girls' mouths, or men with superhuman strength turning heads into a red spray.There is, however, a strange young woman going on a killing spree because she can't afford to buy an appartment or... something.The movie has a completely pointless contrivance which sees the narrative told on a nonlinear timeline. It jumps back and forward constantly adding nothing but confusion to the proceedings. I was ready to blame that for the fact that I never understood why the protagonist started killing but, you know what? I don't think the movie ever really explains that, and I think the confusing timeline might be there to hide that fact. Perhaps the filmmakers thought that if they made the movie confusing enough, people would assume that there was an adequate explanation for the carnage in there somewhere and they just didn't notice it.The plot is something to do with a young woman who really wants to buy an apartment overlooking the ocean in HK. Meanwhile, her dad dies when she inexplicably decides to not give him oxygen.The lady going back and forth with banks in regard to buying the apartment is intercut with her randomly killing people in shockingly horrible ways. At one point she apparently causes a pregnant lady to miscarriage. These death scenes, sickeningly violent though they may be, are also far too improbable to really take seriously or get invested it. Our intrepid murderess stabs a man repeatedly right through the torso, the blade clearly coming out the other side. Is his body made out of butter? Another scene has her smash a lady's head into a toilet bowl until the bowl shatters from the force. Not bad for a skinny lil Asian lady.The death-by-bong also has to be seen to be believed.The ending does belatedly acknowledge the fact that the protagonist's killings may have had the effect of lowering property value, but I'm not buying it. It seems an... extreme way of tackling negative gearing issues.If the movie had been told in a straight-forward way, this might have been somehow believable. The weird non-linear narrative just takes all power and believability out of the movie.

Peter Mckain well lets start with the plot then.... the basic premise of the film is as a young girl the main character was kicked out of her house by the sea and since that day she has had a dream of buying it back. The problem being that houses are super expensive around the time it is set and several events tip her over the edge as she will do anything to accomplish her dreams.The plot is extremely well scripted in my opinion and the gore effects are over the top. The camera work is pretty nice i particularly like the opening sequence with some stylistic shots of flats and apartments. The whole film is satirical and the people killed are considered evil in the directors eyes. All the characters are like typical people you would meet in Hong Kong adding a sense of realism furthermore the director says he got the idea from a news article so its based on real events. The music is all composed by the lead actresses band which is quite a nice touch.In the end you are left with a controversial film with some nasty gore scenes with hints of black comedy and an original believable plot that stands out from typical slashers and will keep your attention throughout the film. It definitely merits a watch but it is definitely not for everyone.

punishmentpark A second viewing of this slasher / drama. The combination of the two elements aforementioned still don't work perfectly to my taste, but I enjoyed it more than the first time. It helped that the storyline, with all its shifting back and forth in time, became clearer to me this time, and thusly had a greater impact.Josie Ho is a fine actress and knows how to underplay a definite psycho. The background of her character is worked out well, based on true facts of the practice of rich people forcing out home owners in Hong Kong in the '80s. The moment when she lets her grandfather die, partly because he betrayed her trust, is a pivotal moment to somehow stay on her side as a viewer - although it should not be missed that there is a lot of awfully dark humour in here, as well. And that humour makes it so that the gore (very well worked out, but not easy to stomach - pun intended?) has its rightful place here, too. Altogether, this is a weird one, and it will certainly not be for everyone. It may never be a favorite of mine, either, but the ingredients are separately very effective in any case.From 6 to 7 out of 10.

chaos-rampant 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.