This is a collection of nice looking scenes with high quality visual design and some fairly good acting. Hooray. And yet the story is ridiculous, and it just doesn't hang together. By the time you get to the clichés that serve as an ending, you'll want to slap something. The garish color and playful effects really do work as individual moments, but the story line is more a serious of dots that start to connect up and then veer into some kind of weird scribble. The waste of acting talent here is particularly odd. Annette Benning is rocking it for much of the film, until she morphs into Laurie Anderson. Downey is only in part of the third reel, and he's fairly restrained but effective. Rea has it dialed way down, to the point where there's almost nothing to it.

Last week I invited two friends of mine to see this polemic picture. They kinda liked it, for some reason, but I really didn't. From the get go, we're given a confusing story involving Claire Cooper and her torture to try to convince people that she isn't crazy. If I was any of those people she got involved with, I would've also thought she was delirious, since nothing she said could make sense. There are some references to the Snow White story, but they are bad executed. The main reason why I found this movie so boring was the never ending flashbacks; I never knew what was happening now and what was just a vision, so the story got extremely confusing and boring for me. Freud's explanation about dreams is more interesting, in my opinion. Besides, the photography directing is poor and makes it impossible to understand what's going on. I'm just not giving it a lower rating because my friends were able to have some fun in it, but I sincerely wasn't. If I were you, I'd just pass it.

Claire Cooper dreams strange things from time to time. She dreams about a little girl being taken away by a stranger, in her neighbourhood. When her own daughter is kidnapped and murdered only a little later, Claire is sure about the chilling truth that her and the killer's mind are connected to each other in dreams. But nobody believes her ability to foresee the killer's next steps, as she could with her own daughter. In addition, the nervous breakdown she suffers gets her into a mental facility after a suicide attempt. And here, she dreams of her husband being murdered...You could open up a whole can of worms when you analyse this piece from Jordan. Many have stated that it's the worse film ever made, but that's just a joke. As someone once said, someone's trash is another's treasure, and whilst Jordan has really gone over the top in some aspects, his genius is evident in several scenes.Apples here are the order of the day, is it referring to Snow White, as the play suggests at the beginning, or is it the forbidden fruit? After all, Claire's husband nearly strayed off the path, and Vivian's forbidden fruit is obviously his mother, as he has Freudian issues with her.Its a unique version, and some scenes are very disturbing, but it's certainly a visual treat, even if some of the narrative is a little off par, but then, one could argue, that the whole film consists of dreams within a dream, within a dream, and so on, so this is why the film will be heralded as a masterpiece to some, and a dogs dinner to others.Bening is great as the grieving mother, but once again, Downey Jr is wonderful, in some scenes he looks like the pre transformation wolf in Jordan's The Company Of Wolves, which this film reminded me of from time to time.Whether she dreamt it all, or it was reality, it's still a curiosity piece indeed, and worth watching more than once.....

The splendid performances and the interesting plot of In Dreams make it one of those horror movies that could give you nightmares for the days to come. (I myself am the living proof of the movie's strong impact) The serial killer's motives and intentions are unravelled through Claire's eyes and it is this point of view that makes In Dreams a very exciting and gripping film. However, the focus remains solely on Claire and, as a result, we are none the less enlightened about the killer's personality by the end of the film. It is this focus on Claire until the end rather than the killer that leaves the audience with a huge question mark as to who this man really is and what has led him to his actions. However promising and interesting a serial killer we are prepared to come across, the film leaves us without a climax. Robert Downey Jr gives a remarkable performance as the villain, with nothing exceptional and exaggerating in his acting. His admirable performance makes up for the lack of depth the plot leaves us with, but only partially; not only because of the point of view, but because of the direction, as well. A few more close-ups would have made him a villain to remember.