31 Nights of Halloween Horror part 7 - Dream Home

Dream Home
96 mins
Dir. Ho-Cheung Pang
2011/Hong Kong

Hi kids, do you like violence?  Want to know how to beat the high cost of living?  Then put on your rain coat because things are going to get messy when we go apartment shopping in the bustling city of Hong Kong.  Tonight we are looking for our Dream Home.

Man, I don't even know where to begin with this one.  Ok how about this, blood, blood and more blood.  Violence, violence, violence.  This is one gory film.  So living in Hong Kong, it is a very crowded city with lots of high rises and small apartments.  Lots of families are crowded into small quarters and the rent isn't cheap.  I have been to Hong Kong on several occasions and I can vouch for this.  For Cheng Lai Sheung that means working two jobs and sacrificing fun with her friends to afford her dream apartment with a view of the harbor.  When she finally gets enough for the down payment the sellers turn around and raise the selling price on her.  That's when she takes matters into her own hands.

Did I tell you this movie was violent?  The opening scene is of sleeping security guard.  Someone takes an oversized zip tie and puts it around his neck and pulls it tight.  He wakes up gasping for air, desperately trying to breath he grabs for the toolbox and tries to find a box cutter to cut the zip tie.  However it is so tight around his neck he can't get the razor underneath to slice it.  In extreme close up we see the razor frantically trying to cut the zip tie but is only successful slicing into the skin of his neck.  More feeble attempts and he just just winds up slitting his jugular and bleeding out all over the floor.  And this is the opening of the movie.  OK Dream Home, you got my attention, let''s see where this is going.

While this movie has the red stuff spraying everywhere, there is an underlying story to this madness and it is beautifully told in a series of flash backs starting with Cheng as a little girl living with her family and being forced out of their apartment due to greedy landlords and corrupt government officials.  She promises her uncle one day she will get him an apartment that overlooks the harbor so he can see the water again that he loves so much.  She never forgets her promise and interspersed with all the killings we put together the pieces as to why she is doing what she does.  She is not a masked psycho killer, she is not possessed by evil.  She just wants what she worked so hard for and was promised and if that involves a little killing, well so be it.  Ok it involves a lot of killing.

It has been awhile since I remember seeing a film so relentless with filling the screening red.  It is almost reminiscent at times to Story of Rocky-O, but the violence is not as frequent, it is not every 5 minutes, it might be like every 15.  Also it is not as cartoony, it is grisly and in your face though the last series of slayings almost do take on more of a comical approach, but they are no less gruesome.  No one is safe.  Guys, girls, pregnant, in the middle of having sex.  Everyone dies.

But like I said, it is not all about the bloodbath here, there is a simple story told in a creative way that makes this much more entertaining than most of the regular American slasher fair you come across which is some hulking guy killing random kids or a person wronged years ago coming back to extract revenge.  Dream Home came to me as a recommendation and it did not disappoint so I am passing the favor now onto you.  Just make sure you have a towel close by to wipe the blood off.