Dream Home (2010)
A young woman dreams of owning a Hong Kong apartment with a sea view at the famous Victoria Harbour. However due to a poor income, no mortgage and spiraling health care costs for her stricken father her dream home seems just that a dream. Until she decides to take matters into her own hands and clear the current residents out of the apartment.
This Hong Kong horror film from producer and star Josie Ho is unlike any mainstream film i've come across for quite a while. It's wicked combination of topical satire and extremely gruesome horror finds itself at home alongside the French new wave of horror such as Inside (2007) rather than your typical Asian ghost story with which it holds absolutely nothing in common.
The film is very good and stunningly brutal but it lacked the full on suspense of the aforementioned Inside (The film i feel it most resembles when it comes to relentless bloodshed in the home) due to it's fragmented structure which cuts away from the horrors onscreen to show us the womans life up to the point where she takes extreme measures. Due to this Dream Home misses the visceral gut punch as it's constantly taking you out of the moment and not allowing you the time to take in what you have just witnessed.
The many flashback story sequences aren't poor, far from it in fact. They prove Josie Ho to be a wonderful actress giving a beautiful scarred performance, running the gamut of emotions whilst allowing the viewer to laugh and almost cry with her as life constantly kicks her when she's down.
I would love to have seen this film recut and allowed to run as a timeline rather than in flashback mode, yes it would have meant an hour of non-violence but i'm sure it would have made the brutality even more hard hitting than it is... and that's saying something. For this is proper Asian extreme cinema. Arteries are opened and guts are spilled in the most gruesome manner. I defy anyone not to squirm as a young pregnant woman is slowly suffocated and a man is stabbed to death whilst fornicating even though the girl he's shagging seems to be loving the extra thrusting as the knife plunges through his torso repeatedly.
I thought Dream Home was brilliant despite my structural misgivings, in fact it's the finest example of Asian horror i've seen in years, but trust me when i say It's not for the squeamish.
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