This darkly imaginative film from director Neil Jordan (THE CRYING GAME, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE) follows Claire, a psychic New England housewife (Annette Bening) who loses her grip on reality when her dreams connect with those of a psychotic child murderer (Robert Downey Jr.). Centered around a ghost town submerged in the local reservoir and a creepy apple orchard, Claire’s disturbing visions baffle the police and eventually lead to her confinement in an insane asylum. As the killer's fantasies continue to haunt her, Claire realizes she must succumb to her link with his twisted psyche if she is to escape from the hospital, track him down, and put an end to the madness.
Jordan's direction captures his heroine's horrific nightmares and the autumnal New England locales brilliantly, while Bening attacks her role with ferocious gusto. The film's uniquely rich, color-saturated look comes courtesy of cinematographer Darius Khondji. Jordan wrote the screenplay with Bruce Robinson (WITHNAIL & I), adapted from the novel DOLL'S EYES by Bari Wood, and longtime Jordan collaborator Stephen Rea costars as Claire's doubtful psychiatrist.
(20 votes)
2.
Anyone who has seen and loved Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves should feel right at home in his offbeat psychological thriller In Dreams. A sexy, very adult take on "Little Red Riding Hood", Wolves unreeled as a series of surreal fairy tales interwoven within the heated dreams of a young girl verging on womanhood. The film's patron saints were Freud and Jung (as sifted through Jordan's wickedly fertile imagination), and the duo is very much aboard for In Dreams as well. Here's a film that takes place entirely in dreamtime, where the dark, violent fantasies of Claire Cooper (Annette Bening)--wife, mother and illustrator of children's books--play out unpoliced by superego, conscience or society. On the face of it, Claire's a clairvoyant whose mind becomes more and more possessed by child-killer Vivian Thompson (Robert Downey Jr.). Cops and shrinks refuse to take her seriously until she loses her own daughter and much, much more. Tapping into weird images of her soulmate's childhood, when he was abused by a hateful mother in a house now submerged in a nearby reservoir, Claire comes closer and closer to her gender-shifting bad boy (and his latest victim). From start to finish, In Dreams dwells in hyper-reality. Whether leeched of or drenched in colour, slipping eerily through an underwater world, rushing madly toward catastrophe--every hallucinatory shot is saturated with menace. It's the kind of potent, unresolved menace that haunts your waking day after a particularly unsettling nightmare. Watch this gorgeous film through Claire's mind, where she and her murderous doppelganger act out a terrible Oedipal drama driven by sex and jealousy. Bening and Downey deliver superb, risky performances, and Darius Khondji's cinematography, with almost every frame punctuated by blood-reds, is sensuously dreamlike. In Dreams is one of those great, flawed films that reaches for more than it ultimately achieves. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com
(20 votes)
3.
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 haunts her dreams with dark clues to his next deadly moves. With frightening accuracy, Claire predicts his every turn, but still no one believes her. Unable to convince the police, her doctor (Stephen Rea) or even her husband (Aidian Quinn) of her mind-link with the madman, Clair must confront the killer alone…and on his terms…before another terrifying dream becomes a reality!
(19 votes)
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