'In Dreams' (1999)
A movie review by Walter Frith
wfrith@cgocable.net
Member of the ‘Online Film Critics Society' http://ofcs.org/ofcs/
Director Neil Jordan has never been known to make very good movies unless they're are products of his own scripts. His Oscar winning screenplay of 1992's 'The Crying Game' is an example of his skill as an excellent writer, as that film had one of the most shocking plot twists seen in films this decade. Jordan applied a hypnotic like style of direction to 'The Crying Game' and does the same on a much lesser scale with 'In Dreams'.
The film isn't a failure, it just looks weak in many areas but has good performances from its cast which usually redeems films weak in other areas. It has a set up with a social injustice from the past that comes back to haunt others in the film years later. A small town in Massachusetts is flooded in an excavation project in 1965 and one of the town's children falls through the cracks. Combined with years of physical abuse at the hands of his mother and his horrific stay in a mental institution where he received electric shock treatments, he becomes a serial killer (Robert Downey Jr.) and is able to form a nexus with a woman who has psychic abilities. In other words, he can get inside her dreams and torture her.
The subject of his torture is Annette Bening. She plays a woman with psychic abilities who has had the gift (curse) since childhood. Sometimes her visions are real and sometimes they are not. This leads to many psychotic episodes for her after the vision of her daughter's murder comes true. Her life is further complicated by her husband's (Aidan Quinn) suspected infidelity and she is put into a mental institution when her dreams are interpreted by a psychiatrist (Stephen Rea) as those of a disturbed mind.
Rather than elevate the film to a level of dramatic interpretation and put it across as a complex thriller, Neil Jordan instead relies too much on the "schlock value" found in numerous slasher films of the past. His eerie camera work and deserted forest locations are commendable but this can't compensate for a rather thin story. Accompanying Neil Jordan on his screenplay is Bruce Robinson ('The Killing Fields') who all but disappeared from the major Hollywood screen writing scene with only five writing credits to his distinction in the last 15 years and is not impressive in this effort at all.
Annette Bening is quite good in the film and Robert Downey Jr., a very convincing psycho here, has a scene near the end of the film that looks like 'The Shining', 'Psycho', and 'The Silence of the Lambs' all mixed together and as it looks all too obvious, it falls short of getting even a marginal recommendation.
OUT OF 5 > * * *
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