rdfs:comment
| - While advertised as a horror movie, especially in the trailer, Dream House is, at its core, a movie about grief, about how a man reacts to the loss of his family. The plot concerns Will Attenton, a successful publisher in New York City, who quits his job at GPH Publishing moves his family to the small New England town of New Ashford. His first night there, he sees a bunch of teenagers in his basement and chases them out. He soon learns the house was the site of a triple murder.
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abstract
| - While advertised as a horror movie, especially in the trailer, Dream House is, at its core, a movie about grief, about how a man reacts to the loss of his family. The plot concerns Will Attenton, a successful publisher in New York City, who quits his job at GPH Publishing moves his family to the small New England town of New Ashford. His first night there, he sees a bunch of teenagers in his basement and chases them out. He soon learns the house was the site of a triple murder. Learning that the father of the family, Peter Ward, had survived, he tries to learn more about Peter. He initially thinks Peter had come back to stalk him and his family, but a visit to the Greenhaven Psychiatric Hospital reveals that he is Peter Ward. He is initially in denial, but seeing his "co-workers" as patients in the hospital brings him crashing to reality. He sits in the house alone, having a few more visions of his family, as he slowly accepts the truth. It is revealed the reason he lost his family was due to how his neighbor, Jack Patterson, reacted to the loss of his family. Jack was divorced from his wife Ann, and his wife had the house and custody of their daughter Chloe. It is revealed the divorce was on bad terms. Jack hired the hit man Boyce to kill Ann, but a slight mix-up in the driving directions resulted in Boyce killing Libby and the girls. Thus we have a contrast between Peter and Jack. One had turned his grief within, the other turned his rage without. Peter figuratively killed himself, living under the identity of Will Attenton and living a fantasy life. Jack tried to kill his wife, which resulted in killing Peter's family.
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