Holy shit, is that seriously the translation of the title?! I need more goddamned culture! I had no idea you needed six words in one language to translate to two English words? Do they now have dreams or house over there in, uhhh, Asia I think? Yeah! Asia! Can’t you just combine whatever those words are? How are you running business over there in, uhhh, (hops on to Google) HONG KONG?! Where they are speaking CANTONESE?! Title aside, this has been at the top of my Instant Queue for quite some time. Also, there’s gonna be spoilers, so my non-spoiler review is “A gruesome series of deaths, and a clever enough twist to justify the whole thing!” Pretty good review, right? THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT!
And she’ll never be caught because she’s wearing a, wait for it…A HAT! A WONDERFUL DISGUISE!
Our film starts with information about how expensive it is to live in Hong Kong, and that information is obviously followed up with someone sneaking up on a security officer in his office and a zip tie closing around his neck, resulting in him struggling to reach a utility knife to cut it, but he ends up doing nothing more than cutting his own throat. Dammit! That’s when we meet Cheng Lai (Josie Ho), who works as a telemarketer and has a shitty boyfriend who gives her money for sex. Maybe “boyfriend” isn’t the right term, but I don’t think she has sex with EVERYONE, just him. Through a series of flashbacks, we see Cheng Lai as a little girl who dreams of living in a beautiful apartment overlooking the sea, inspired by her dying father’s last wish to provide a house like that for his family. As Cheng Lai gets older, her father’s health declines, and due to an insurance mix-up, none of his procedures are covered, causing Cheng Lai to spend all her savings on him instead of her dream home. She can’t take the financial or emotional abuse much longer, and instead lets her father die, which allows her to get a big insurance check to use as a deposit on her dream home, only to arrive late and have the owners change their mind. Granted, all of these segments are flashbacks that break up the scenes of graphic violence that we learn Cheng Lai is carrying out, which range from a pregnant woman getting a plastic bag vacuum-sealed onto her head, so eviscerations, to a woman getting a woman plank shoved into her eye socket, to a guy getting killed while fucking a girl from behind and chopping off his dick, causing blood to spray all over her back and makes her think it’s semen, to, well, YOU GET THE IDEA, IT’S GROSS STUFF. Why is this all happening? Well, again, spoiler alert, but would you pay full price for an apartment in a really nice building if you just read in the news that there was an 11-person killing spree? Well, neither would Cheng Lai! She drives the price down by murdering everyone, moves into the apartment, and finally lives in her “dream home”. However, we then hear the voiceovers of some news people talking about how bad the economy is and how terrible a time it is to try to buy a house and you’d have to be an idiot to do it. DAMMIT, CHENG LAI!
Do I love imagining dicks or is there a dick hidden in those pile of guts, or both?
I’ve been watching a lot of “fun” horror movies lately, haven’t I? I have no problem with that! Considering this movie was called “Dream Home”, I thought it was going to be about ghosts , and boy, was I fucking wrong! Even though the effects were completely ridiculous, they were still fun to watch. Seeing a woman with a wooden board sticking out of her face as she tries to stab people or seeing a guy holding his owns intestines in his body and plopping some ice on them was silly, but enjoyable. The whole time that I was watching the movie and it was jumping back and forth between the two different timelines, I kept trying to figure out why these things were happening, and when we learned why, it took me by surprise and made total sense. Or at least, makes sense if you have undergone emotional torture from your father and spent your entire life trying to achieve one thing and have it snatched away from you for the sole reason of greed. It was also nice to see a female killer for a change, as we typically see men in these roles. If you like gory/violent movies that has just enough of a plot to pull a story together and one that ends just as soon as the premise runs out, then I definitely recommend checking this one out.
Wolfman Moon Scale
The Wolfman Cometh 