Thinking & Writing

            If I were to tell everyone that I day dream in visual detail about being a superhero who saves everyone from a nuclear blast or of my future life in a house married to a man I saw in my class, no one would bat an eye.  But if I told them that I can see my deceased grandmother who talks and interacts with me then everyone loses their minds, particularly me in this case.  The common mentality of people is to ignore others with mental conditions or to shrug them off.  There is not much help for people with mental illnesses especially when facilities that are supposed to help them can’t because of a lack of funding from the very people who keep this mindset.  This is what is predominantly shown in the movie Dream House. 

            A man who is suffering from a severe mental illness, is plagued by the relentless hallucinations of his deceased family.  Yet, after spending five years in a mental facility, there is no relief for his suffering.  He is let free where people pretend there is nothing wrong with him, ignoring the fact that he seriously needs some sort of help with this problem. 

            This film came out in 2011, a time when there wasn’t much talk about mental illness.  It was starting to become more common to talk about such things as depression or schizophrenia, but the old fashion thinking that it is taboo to talk about such things was still prominent.  Only now has it become way more open to talk about these sort of problems. 

The movie was released when Casey Anthony was on trial for killing her daughter, a major news story in 2011 that many people were following closely.    Any time a child is brought into a seriously disturbing matter, it catches peoples attention.  There were many questions as to the competency of Anthony’s mental condition, whether she indeed was mentally sound or not.  The correlation between this prominent case and Dream House are uncanny.  Both parents were put on trial for the murder of their family, both had their mental health in question, both were acquitted from their case.  So many people during the Anthony case were so sure of her guiltiness and were surprised of the verdict given by the judge.  It could be possible that Jim Sheridan, the director of Dream House, saw an opportunity to bring to light the pains and horrors of not being mentally of the right mind, regardless if they did in fact murder their family or not.  Also the fact that we just don’t know the truth, perhaps they did not actually commit the terrible deed, which was ultimately shown in the film.  

Daniel Craig, one of the stars in the film, in an interview about Dream House stated,” the mind is a wonderful thing.  And a dangerous thing as well.”  Doesn’t that statement just capture the very essence of the film and of human kind as well?  This seems to be the very reason that mental illnesses get such bad raps, because people think that they are dangerous.  And well certainly there are those few cases where a mentally disturbed person is a danger to themselves or others, that does not hinder the fact that there is a great need for more awareness and aid to mental health conditions.  This very fact should be the actual reason for action of greater aid, greater facilities to help people plagued by a mental illness.

It is known that this film did not receive very many accolades; a lot of people did not like it.  It’s possible that they were simply disappointed that it is more of a thriller rather than a horror film or thought it was frankly boring.  Perhaps though that taboo societal mindedness of not allowing such personal problems like mental illness be shown caused many to watch it and cringe.  Topics like this can be uncomfortable and coupled with the uncertainty of the main characters mental condition and if he did in fact murder his wife and two daughters could put even the strongest man on edge and feel very uncomfortable. 

            For me personally, I connected well with this film and could see the problems it was trying to exploit in society.  I have known several people with severe mental conditions, mostly bipolar manic-depressives.  For them, day-to-day life is frightening because they don’t know when they might crack again and there is not much sympathy for them because so many people believe in the ideal that you should keep such things locked up.  Yet don’t we all have these ‘dream houses’ where we try to keep our problems locked up, our secrets and all it does is end up hurting us?  Too bad that for so many people out there, what they have to keep locked away in their ‘dream house’ is a serious mental illness and they can’t seek any sort of comfort or aid from society because they will be judged for it.