On one hand, Dream Home is a poignant drama about a young Hong Kong woman's life of hardship and her dream of living in an apartment overlooking the bay; on the other, it's a gore-drenched tale of obsession and madness, the lady in question going to extreme and very bloody lengths in order to achieve her goal. As a whole, the film works brilliantly as a shocking slice of social satire on the difficulty of getting on the property ladder (although it's not as far fetched as it might seem: the film is apparently based on true events!).
Josie Ho plays Cheng Lai-Sheung, who, ever since she was a child living in a run-down high-rise, has longed to move with her family to No.1 Victoria Bay, an apartment block affording views of the sea. As the years pass, Josie saves every penny of her meagre wages, but loses both of her parents, yet still hangs on to her dream. So when the opportunity arises, she does whatever it takes to secure her dream home at an affordable price—by killing off the other inhabitants to drive down the property values.
The emotional drama is sensitively handled by director Ho-Cheung Pang, with touching flashbacks to a childhood friendship, Cheng's relationship with her ailing father, her unfulfilling job, and intimate moments shared with a married man, but for me, Dream Home is all about the gritty violence, which, along with the true-story connection, lends the film an atmosphere not unlike that of a classic Cat III movie. Pang certainly doesn't hold back when it comes to graphic unpleasantness, Cheng's victims suffering a variety of very grisly fates
Victim number one, a security guard, is forced to slash his own jugular while trying to remove a plastic tie-wrap from around his throat; a pregnant woman is suffocated with a vacuum bag and her maid gets a screwdriver through her head (which emerges out of her eye!); the pregnant woman's husband breaks his neck in a brutal struggle with Cheng. The most outrageous scene of all takes place in an apartment occupied by some drugged up youths and a pair of whores: Cheng guts one guy, sticks a broken bottle into another's neck, bashes a hooker's face on a toilet bowl, repeatedly stabs a bloke and emasculates him while he is going at it with the other prostitute, and jams a broken piece of wood into the woman's mouth. When a pair of cops arrive to investigate the disturbance, Cheng gets the upper hand and shoots them both in the head!
Not since the Cat III heyday of Anthony Wong have I seen such relentlessly nasty slaughter in a HK movie.
Josie Ho plays Cheng Lai-Sheung, who, ever since she was a child living in a run-down high-rise, has longed to move with her family to No.1 Victoria Bay, an apartment block affording views of the sea. As the years pass, Josie saves every penny of her meagre wages, but loses both of her parents, yet still hangs on to her dream. So when the opportunity arises, she does whatever it takes to secure her dream home at an affordable price—by killing off the other inhabitants to drive down the property values.
The emotional drama is sensitively handled by director Ho-Cheung Pang, with touching flashbacks to a childhood friendship, Cheng's relationship with her ailing father, her unfulfilling job, and intimate moments shared with a married man, but for me, Dream Home is all about the gritty violence, which, along with the true-story connection, lends the film an atmosphere not unlike that of a classic Cat III movie. Pang certainly doesn't hold back when it comes to graphic unpleasantness, Cheng's victims suffering a variety of very grisly fates
Victim number one, a security guard, is forced to slash his own jugular while trying to remove a plastic tie-wrap from around his throat; a pregnant woman is suffocated with a vacuum bag and her maid gets a screwdriver through her head (which emerges out of her eye!); the pregnant woman's husband breaks his neck in a brutal struggle with Cheng. The most outrageous scene of all takes place in an apartment occupied by some drugged up youths and a pair of whores: Cheng guts one guy, sticks a broken bottle into another's neck, bashes a hooker's face on a toilet bowl, repeatedly stabs a bloke and emasculates him while he is going at it with the other prostitute, and jams a broken piece of wood into the woman's mouth. When a pair of cops arrive to investigate the disturbance, Cheng gets the upper hand and shoots them both in the head!
Not since the Cat III heyday of Anthony Wong have I seen such relentlessly nasty slaughter in a HK movie.