Metacritic reviews

It's painful to watch a movie like Dream House - well-acted, beautifully shot and directed with extraordinary care and attention to craft - only to realize that the story, the alleged backbone, is absurd.

A modest genre entry, Dream House also benefits from the fact that any movie with good enough sense to cast Elias Koteas is automatically better as a result, even if he is utterly wasted here.

This suburban gothic is a logy, convoluted mess.

Dream House is the full magilla, with imaginary images, sanity questions, peek-a-boo startles and the usual are-they-real-or-not? characters.

Despite the A-list talent involved, this haunted house tale is a thrill-deprived, inert misfire.

With its telegraphed twists and clunky pacing, the film would be unbearable were it not for the fine trio of Craig, Weisz and Naomi Watts, all more or less slumming.

This crackpot thriller from the usually competent Jim Sheridan leaves only one mystery unsolved: what on earth was he thinking?

So much is just so…obvious.

Dream House also manages to commit a cardinal thriller sin: casting well-known actors in ostensibly inconsequential roles, which in this case reveals the real culprit before the mystery proper has even begun.

The real problem is, when the film blindsides us with a mystery we didn't know existed, we're already too busy not caring about mystery we knew was there.