MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr. Director: Neil Jordan Rated: R, with profanity and graphic violence Length: 110 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(Jan. 15, 1998) -- Director Neil Jordan knows a thing or two about making nightmares flesh, as he proved in such films as Interview With the Vampire and The Company of Wolves.

But owning that ability apparently doesn't mean he can control it, as his newest film, In Dreams, proves. Written by Jordan and Bruce Robinson, this tale of a mind-meld between an artist and a serial killer starts promisingly, but then takes a left turn into the ridiculous when the writer-director tries to make sense of it all.

What Jordan does best is capture the sense of surreal disorientation of the dream state. As Claire Cooper (Annette Bening) falls deeper and deeper under the spell of an unseen murderer, Jordan brings the audience deeply into Claire's feelings of being trapped in a reality that no one can see or will believe.

When the killer abducts and kills Claire's daughter, he also begins burrowing deeper into Claire's brain. He seems to be broadcasting his thoughts to her, plaguing her with visions of death and madness. Like a crazed person suffering hallucinations no one else can see, Claire spins further and further out of control, until she winds up drugged out in a mental institution.

To this point, Jordan seems to be operating in fascinatingly creepy territory, though without particularly plausible explanations.

But even as he brings in Irish actor Stephen Rea as an improbably Boston-accented shrink named Silverman, In Dreams loses its power precisely because the script tries to offer a concrete basis for the nebulous story it has been telling.

At that point, In Dreams becomes a run-of-the-mill (and highly unlikely) story of child abuse, mixed with cliched (and equally unlikely) images of the kind of snake-pit loony bin a woman of Claire's social position would never wind up in.

It's as though Jordan took the various plot threads, put them through a loom and came up with a potholder, which he tries to pass off as something much grander.