Half 'Amityville Horror,' Half 'The Money Pit,' And All Confusing

Dream House tries to combine the familiar plots of 1979’s The Amityville Horror (James Brolin/Margot Kidder) and 1986’s The Money Pit (Tom Hanks/Shelley Long).

We know the story line well: Unsuspecting family moves into fix-it-up house where grisly murders have happened, unsuspecting family discovers weird stuff in the house, unsuspecting family moves out or is generally eviscerated. Or they go bankrupt from crooked contractors.

The plot twist here, and it’s a lame one, is that Will Atenton (brooding and disturbed, and often shirtless Daniel Craig) is suffering from some sort of mental disorder that makes him unsure if he is the former houseowner/killer or if he’s the loving dad of his alive and/or shot dead wife and kids. The story line gets even more confusing in the second hour, as a neighbor’s (Naomi Watts) ex-husband (Marton Csokas) re-enters and embarks on a head-scratching and violent flashback sequence. Or is it the present?

The stars of the movie, besides Atenton’s bare chest, are the movie’s creepy building settings. An asylum, a police station, and especially, the house Atenton buys are filled with darkened scenes illuminated by blazing sunlight. Atenton’s basement, in which he finds a coven of disturbed, sideways haircut-wearing teens at one point, is especially wild. Down there, he finds bad lighting, cobwebs, scary outdated toys, dirty dishes, a Bob Marley poster, and a Keith Moon-sized drum kit. Oh wait, that’s my own basement.

Craig has some nice moments, two of which might foreshadow a future baseball movie (even though he’s English). Early on, he playfully hurls snowballs at his wife in a submariner style, like the 1970s Pittsburgh Pirates’ reliever Kent Tekulve. Later on, he tomahawks a log at some villains like Dave Parker, also of the 1970s Pirates. Is there a We Are Family baseball pic in his future?

Early on, Craig’s British accent can be a bit difficult to understand, but that resolves itself soon enough. Truthfully, the misunderstood dialogue probably wouldn’t straighten out the plot anyway.

Throughout the picture, I kept wondering, How are they going to resolve this? And the ending is at once a relief and a seen-it-before final chapter. Meanwhile, Craig’s intense aura led me to wonder: Has this guy ever done comedy? To future directors: I bet he could handle it.

Quotable moments:

“You don’t want to be chained to your desk as an old editor, do you?” — Atenton’s coworker, congratulating him on his resignation

“Peter Ward — he went a little nuts” — a cop, referring to the house’s original owner

"Everybody who lives in this house gets killed” —A neighbor’s daughter, as recalled by Atenton’s daughter

“I knew we shouldn’t have moved out of the city” —  Atenton’s wife (Rachel Wiesz)

“We’ll hire a priest, a witch doctor, we’ll feng shu the place” — Atenton to his wife after the weird stuff first happens

Other observations at the cinema:

• When all else fails, put a man in a dress (a Covenant Harbor summer camp axiom circa 1991): Cross-dressing could be the biggest trend in fall movies this year: Adam Sandler plays a woman in Jack and Jill (nice quote: “I wanna play Twister with your sister …”). Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio plays the longtime, sexually ambiguous FBI leader in the Clint Eastwood-directed J.Edgar.

• Way too many plotlines revealed in the trailer: Mark Wahlberg’s Contraband preview alone left me scratching my head.