I'm not sure why this was so critically assaulted when it was released. It's flawed, to be sure, but it's also intense, gorgeous, and deeply unsettling. Jordan shoots the dream sequences in a highly expressionist manner - a welcome change from the recent, "realistic" trend - and blurs the lines between reality and illusion, giving the entire work an off-beat, surreal feel. This is compounded by the (intentionally) excessive performances and rather weighty abstract themes, making this is a film you can not easily dismiss as poorly made or over-the-top. I think the critics just viewed this too literally.

I revisited this film today for the first time in a couple years. It is not Neil Jordan's most focused or sophisticated film, but it is definitely a great deal of fun, and critics undervalued it 15 years ago. It has so much Gothic fun with the idea of depicting dream/nightmare logic on the screen, and the cast is strong, particularly Robert Downey Jr. as the androgynous child murderer. (I believe this was his final film role before leaving the industry for a while to become sober.) The relatively thin and contrived nature of the screenplay leaves large spaces in the fabric of the film, and Jordan fills them as best he can by his dialing his colorful, macabre, fairytale indebted visual fixations up to eleven and beyond, rendering In Dreams a curious and worthy entry in his fantastic oeuvre.

Loved In Dreams when I saw it back in the day.