# In Dreams (1999)

### reviewed by
Simon Calloway

    'In Dreams'

    by Simon Calloway

Cast: Annette Bening; Stephen Rea; Robert Downey, Jr.; Adain Quinn

In Dreams is part X-Files, part horror movie, but always interesting. It's the kind of movie where you think you know what is going to happen, and, bang! The plot twists yet again.

The film stars Bening as Caire Cooper, a young women who is happily married and has a daughter who appears in school plays. They live in a happy little town in New England. The town is so quaint, the school play of Snow White is shown outside, with Prince Charming riding a real horse.

During this unfaithful show, Claire's daughter mysteriously disappears among all the kids and parents. There is a kidnapper out there, and Claire nows where he is. She begins to pick up psychic day dreams of a little girl in an apple orchard, a boy tapped in a room the is filling with water, a town underwater. These are some pretty horrible images, and Claire can't handle them, especially now that her child has been taken away from her.

The story soon has Claire in a hospital and with a psychiatrist (Rea). She tells him that the man who took her daughter is sending her these weird thoughts and he has also taken other children in the town. This man is Downey Jr., and he can play a weirdo at heart.

In Dreams was directed by Neil Jordan. You can feel the sort of Interview With the Vampire-esque filming technics he uses. Atmosphere, suspense is all used instead of blood and other bodily fluids as most horror films do. And with very good acting from Bening, In Dreams succeeds, to a point. Aside from what the film has going for it, Dreams sometimes trys too hard at making bizarreness apparant. When the kidnapper starts talking to Claire via a computer, the film relishes X-Files territory, and I liked it. When Claire literally goes mad and starts throwing apples into the sank and smashing them while the camera follows her every movement in dizzying essense, I just thought You don't need to do that, the film was going smoothly just as a talky thriller.

In Dreams is a nice, stylish, sometimes scary film, but, it could have used that "X''-tra something.

    ***
    ~TeenViews (c) 1999~

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