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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Dreamworks Video
Salesrank: 26197
Released: June 1, 1999 |
| Our Price: $3.98 |
| Used Price: $1.62 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
CLAIRE COOPER'S ONCE PEACEFUL FAMILY LIFE TAKES A CHILLING TURN WHEN A MYSTERIOUS SERIAL KILLER INVADES HER SEEMINGLY IDYLLIC NEW ENGLAND TOWN AND THROUGH HER DREAMS PROVIDES DEADLY PREMONITIONS OF HIS NEXT MOVES. NOW, ONLY SHE CAN STOP HIM.
Description of In Dreams:
Anyone who has seen and loved Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves should feel right at home in his off-beat 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. Wolves' patron saints were Freud and Jung (as sifted through Jordan's wickedly fertile imagination), and the duo are very much aboard for In Dreams as well. Here's a movie 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 hyperreality. Whether leeched of or drenched in color, 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 as therapeutic (?) theater inside 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. But what a welcome change from the dullness and shallowness of the formulaic sure things that dominate movie screens as the 20th century draws to a close. --Kathleen Murphy
In Dreams Reviews:
Fascinating, Creepy, Entertaining 
2009-04-13 - I had never even heard of this movie before deciding to watch it late at night on TV. I am beyond pleasantly surprised. Superb acting (particularly from Bening and Downey), elegant suspense, and above all immensely creepy. The cinematography is surreal and gorgeous, making you feel almost as though you're suffering Claire's horrific dreams right along with her. And through the whole thing there was that wonderful tension you get from a good suspense movie, I spent most of the movie leaning forward, waiting for what might happen next.
It's not a perfect movie, of course, not by a long shot. There are some scenes that are awkwardly abrupt or disjointed, and the ending is far more predictable and uninteresting than the rest of the film. And it's certainly the type of movie that requires some willing suspension of disbelief. If the idea of psychic connection seems ridiculous to you, I'd steer you away from this one. But if you're the type that likes a good creepy suspense film with some gory violence and fantasy mixed in, you'll enjoy this I think. Go into it expecting something weird, interesting, and rather different, and you'll come out satisfied
VERY HAPPY First time buyer!!! 
2008-12-15 - I absolutely love this movie... I ordered it and received it in about a week!! The movie was as advertised..in it's original case and there wasn't so much as a scratch or fingerprint on it!! i love Amazon.com and will order again and again....one satisfied customer!
Horrible but hilarious
2008-11-21 - I bought this as a gift for my mother. she enjoyed hte movie and i admit it is a good movie but i can't watch it without laughing.
Not an upper.
2008-10-12 - I really liked this movie. Annette Bening was so good. I thought is was scary, suspenseful, interesting and also sad.
Six Feet Under The Apple Tree...
2008-09-29 - IN DREAMS is NOT a typical hollywood thriller. It is a shocker w/ so little light in the story that anyone looking for a "feel good" movie had better avoid it like a face-full of sulphuric acid! As for me, I love it! Annette Bening (American Beauty) is Claire, a woman who has become psychically linked w/ a serial murderer named Vivian Thompson, played by Robert Downey, jr. (Zodiac). The two are drawn together in fatalistic fashion, while Claire's mind disintegrates, and her family is obliterated. Sound like fun? I first saw this gruesome little chiller back in '99. I never forgot it. It is a psychic odyssey through almost total darkness. Claire is taken through inner hell, culminating in a finalé that brought me the same icy satisfaction as the ending of CANDYMAN. Director, Neil Jordan (The Company Of Wolves) brings this twisted faerie tale into being w/ no holds barred. In this movie, nothing is sacred and no one is safe! Highly recommended...
