In Dreams (1999)

If only this film was a dream, it would have been less painful.

Claire Cooper’s (Annette Bening) peaceful family life takes a chilling turn when a mysterious serial killer (Robert Downey Jr.) invades her seemingly idyllic New England town and starts haunting her dreams with dark clues to his next deadly moves. Unable to convince the police, her doctor or even her husband of her link with the madman, Claire must confront the killer alone, before another terrifying dream becomes a reality.

This film is notable for just being so stupid and weird, and I can’t quite say I disagree. This film has one of the most over-blown stories I have ever seen. There are times in this film where I actually wondered what was going on, and thinking maybe the whole twist at the end of the movie is that we are all in a dream. Eh? Sadly that wasn’t the truth.

Nothing is right about this very un-scary scary movie. The story is a mess, a ridiculous jumble of scary-movie cliches with logic gaps you could taxi a 747 through and totally unbelievable characters doing totally absurd things. And then they just added in an even worse dream sequence that was even more stupid than ever. Sometimes it was just so laughable I couldn’t help but start belching with laughter.

If there is one good thing that this film has, and its look. The visuals are actually good to look at in some scenes, and although they are completely laughable they still have a good look.

The lead character has to be THE single most annoying character ever put to film. Loud, obnoxious, self-centered…has to be the center of attention at all times even when she’s causing a multiple car collision – she puts everyone around her in danger just so she can be loud and awful. It’s not Annette Bening’s fault, you know…she’s a good actress…but man oh man the character is just a plain old loud dink of a creep, and she endangers everyone around her. Downey is often brilliant, but he’s just hamboning here.

Consensus: Though it has lush visuals, In Dreams feels like a dream with so much confusion, terrible lines, and over all a movie that will just turn out to be absurd as it goes on and on.

1.5/10=SomeOleBullShitt!!!!!