In Dreams has airline pilot Paul Cooper (Aidan Quinn) returning home to his wife Claire (Annette Bening) & young daughter Rebecca (Katie Sagona), his wife Claire has had strange terrifying dreams that seem real for her entire life but lately she has been having visions of a young girl being abducted & abused in an apple orchard & believes it to have actually happened. Paul decides to take her fears to the police & talks to Detective Jack Jay (Paul Guilfoyle) but is largely ignored. Shortly after at a school play Rebecca goes missing, the police are alerted & start to search for her & eventually find her dead body in a reservoir near her house. Claire is obviously devastated & realises that the dream she had was a prediction of things to come rather than recollection of things past. Claire has a car accident & is hospitalised, her neurosurgeon Dr. Stevens (Dennis Boutsikaris) is worried by what she says & calls his friend & psychiatrist Dr. Silverman (Stephen Rea) in to see if he can help her make sense of her dreams. It's not long before Silverman starts to believe Claire as her dreams become worse, Claire believes she has a psychic link with a serial killer named Vivian Thompson (Robert Downey Jr.) who is taunting by sending her these terrifying dreams...
Co-written & directed by Neil Jordan I personally didn't find much to like in In Dreams. The script by Jordan & Bruce Robinson is based on a novel called 'Doll's Eyes' by Bari Wood & is a bit of a muddled mess. I found the film far too slow, the story never gripped me as for most of it we don't see Vivian kill anyone as it focuses on Claire & her breakdown, boring. The dreams make no sense & don't really act as clues from which they can find Vivian, I would have preferred more of a straight thriller with more of an emphasis on Vivian & Claire trying to stop him because in the end he finds her & most of the film seems to concentrate on Claire screaming or crying, boring. The character's were dull & uninteresting, I really couldn't have cared less about any of them & when the inevitable climactic showdown between Claire & Vivian happened I was distinctly unexcited & unmoved, in fact I was more bored than anything else (do you see a pattern developing here?). In Dreams is also hard to follow as it skips between bizarre visions or flashbacks or whatever their supposed to be & reality with little regard for the viewer, as a whole the film just about makes sense but I still think it's a bit of a mess, oh & a boring mess too. Finally I saw that so-called 'shock' ending coming a mile off, it was so obvious I was almost embarrassed & the fact that the unpleasant subject of child murder arises it made uncomfortable viewing for me, all I want when I watch a film is to be entertained & have fun & this isn't my idea of entertainment or fun.
The thing that saves In Dreams from being a complete bomb is director Jordan's visual style & flair as he gives the film a really nice look & feel with some cool imagery. There seems to be plenty of fairytale references & the dreams themselves look very fairytale like & Claire's latest job was to adapt & illustrate a book of fairy tales by the Grimm Brother's. The blurring of Claire's car crash with the death of her daughter is a nicely put together sequence while the film overall has a dark undercurrent running through it. The violence & gore is restrained, someone has a knife stuck in their eye, a nurse is stabbed in the neck & there is a brief shot of a dog eating someone's face but that is just about it, I would have liked the horror quotient bumped up a little.
With a budget of about $30,000,000 I am aghast that In Dreams cost as much money as it did, where did all the money go? There are no major A-list stars, no major action or special effect scenes, takes place in very few locations & nothing in my mind that would justify spending 30 big ones. It's well made (for that sort of money that's the least I would expect) but apart from some nice visual touches nothing stands out as being particularly outstanding. The acting is also another strong element but this hardly makes up for In Dreams other deficiencies.
I didn't find anything in In Dreams that I particularly enjoyed, I thought it was boring, dull, uneventful, muddled & I just couldn't get into it. There are so many better horror & thrillers out there that films like In Dreams shouldn't really get made. Disappointing & probably one to avoid as far as I'm concerned.
Co-written & directed by Neil Jordan I personally didn't find much to like in In Dreams. The script by Jordan & Bruce Robinson is based on a novel called 'Doll's Eyes' by Bari Wood & is a bit of a muddled mess. I found the film far too slow, the story never gripped me as for most of it we don't see Vivian kill anyone as it focuses on Claire & her breakdown, boring. The dreams make no sense & don't really act as clues from which they can find Vivian, I would have preferred more of a straight thriller with more of an emphasis on Vivian & Claire trying to stop him because in the end he finds her & most of the film seems to concentrate on Claire screaming or crying, boring. The character's were dull & uninteresting, I really couldn't have cared less about any of them & when the inevitable climactic showdown between Claire & Vivian happened I was distinctly unexcited & unmoved, in fact I was more bored than anything else (do you see a pattern developing here?). In Dreams is also hard to follow as it skips between bizarre visions or flashbacks or whatever their supposed to be & reality with little regard for the viewer, as a whole the film just about makes sense but I still think it's a bit of a mess, oh & a boring mess too. Finally I saw that so-called 'shock' ending coming a mile off, it was so obvious I was almost embarrassed & the fact that the unpleasant subject of child murder arises it made uncomfortable viewing for me, all I want when I watch a film is to be entertained & have fun & this isn't my idea of entertainment or fun.
The thing that saves In Dreams from being a complete bomb is director Jordan's visual style & flair as he gives the film a really nice look & feel with some cool imagery. There seems to be plenty of fairytale references & the dreams themselves look very fairytale like & Claire's latest job was to adapt & illustrate a book of fairy tales by the Grimm Brother's. The blurring of Claire's car crash with the death of her daughter is a nicely put together sequence while the film overall has a dark undercurrent running through it. The violence & gore is restrained, someone has a knife stuck in their eye, a nurse is stabbed in the neck & there is a brief shot of a dog eating someone's face but that is just about it, I would have liked the horror quotient bumped up a little.
With a budget of about $30,000,000 I am aghast that In Dreams cost as much money as it did, where did all the money go? There are no major A-list stars, no major action or special effect scenes, takes place in very few locations & nothing in my mind that would justify spending 30 big ones. It's well made (for that sort of money that's the least I would expect) but apart from some nice visual touches nothing stands out as being particularly outstanding. The acting is also another strong element but this hardly makes up for In Dreams other deficiencies.
I didn't find anything in In Dreams that I particularly enjoyed, I thought it was boring, dull, uneventful, muddled & I just couldn't get into it. There are so many better horror & thrillers out there that films like In Dreams shouldn't really get made. Disappointing & probably one to avoid as far as I'm concerned.