In Dreams

Here there be spoilers. Ye be warned. Seriously. I'm going to give away the ending.

Back when I was in high school, some of my friends and I were hanging out at Sean's house. Sitting on the TV was a copy of In Dreams, which Sean held up to all of us and warned us all to never, ever watch it on account of its being terrible.
I didn't think it could possibly be that bad. And I like Robert Downey Jr. So about twelve years later I disregarded Sean's warning and watched In Dreams.
And it was pretty terrible.
You know how every movie is supposed to have different acts so that the story can, you know, happen? This doesn't have acts so much as it's a bunch of little different movies.
Movie 1: Claire Cooper has vague psychic dreams, which she misinterprets. Turns out her daughter was the kidnapped girl in the dream and, when the daughter dies, Claire drives off a bridge.
Movie 2: Claire and her husband have arguments because her psycic visions are annoying him. Also, Claire figures out she's psychically connected to one specific guy. Apples are supposed to be sinister.
Movie 3: Claire goes off the fucking deep end trying to prove to people that she's not crazy.
Movie 4: Claire figures out who it is she's psychicially connected to (Vivian Thompson) and magically knows everything about him now. She escapes from the hospital in pretty much the exact same way he did thirty years ago.
Movie 5: Claire meets up with Vivian. He's a nutjob, but a pathetic one. She, being the only person on the planet with any hope of ever understanding him, foils his plans and dies.
Movie 6: Vivian is ruled guilty but insane and sentenced to be imprisoned until he's well. He's okay with that until Claire's ghost invades his cell and torments him for no good reason that I can see.
The end.
I'm not going to even bother covering Movies 1 through 3 because In Dreams doesn't really get interesting until Movie 4, and even then I didn't care about any of the characters until Movie 5.
Vivian is, by far, the most interesting and sympathetic character in the movie. I don't know if that means that I have a fucked up definition of sympathetic, if I'm more inclined to care about a character if he's played by Robert Downey Jr. or if he really was the easiest character to root for. He was definitely the most interesting by virtue of being crazy, but when his plan started to fall apart (he kidnapped a little girl so he and Claire could be her parents; "All I ever wanted was a family.") and he started whining like a little kid ("I went through so much to bring you here!") I truly did feel bad for him.
Honestly, lady, if you'd just go along with him neither you nor the kid would come to any harm. At least play along until the police find you. You'll be there, like, six months tops.
But no, you have to be little miss hero bitch and spoil everything.
And why the hell bother to come back to haunt him and make him miserable? He's already insane and had his only hope for a family ripped out from under him. Let him just spend the rest of his life alone in a cell.
Honestly, if the movie ended with her dying and him getting sentenced to life inprisonment (or even if he'd have died) I would have been okay with it, but that whole "Claire's ghost tormenting Vivian" thing completely took away any positive feelings I had for Claire.
Good job, lady, now you just look like a vengeful bitch.

End of line.
-Sally