MOVIE ANALYSIS

Dream House
Summary:
Peter Ward is a mental patient who recently left a psychiatric hospital and then a halfway house. Five years
earlier, his wife, Elizabeth, and daughters Beatrice and Katherine were murdered at their home. During the
attack, Peter was shot in the head, and has no memories of the murders. He has created his own world in
which his family is fine and happy to be together. In his world, he is a successful book publisher named Will
Atenton; Elizabeth is Libby Atenton; Beatrice is Trish Atenton; and Katherine is Dee Dee Atenton.
Peter moves back to his abandoned old house and lives inside. It is boarded up and unsafe and covered with
graffiti, but in Peter's disturbed mind, the house is gorgeous and his wife and kids live there happily. Peter
begins to re-connect with his old neighbors, including Ann Patterson. She recognizes Peter as her neighbor
from five years ago and wonders why he is living in an unfit house. She begins to realize that Peter is still
insane and that he is imagining that his dead family is alive in the house. He speaks as if everything is
normal, and this alarms Ann.
Within Peter's delusion, Trish and Dee Dee start seeing a man watching the house from the front yard, and
Will and Libby find evidence that something has happened to the house's previous owners. Will eventually
discovers that, years prior, a woman named Elizabeth and her daughters Beatrice and Katherine were
murdered, and her husband, Peter Ward, was the main suspect because they believed he was the only one
at the house during the shooting, but was let off because of lack of evidence. Will starts believing that Peter
Ward has returned and is stalking his family, and starts searching for more information about him. He doesn't
yet realize that he himself is Peter Ward and that Will does not exist.
Will's research leads him to the psychiatric hospital where Peter Ward was committed after being arrested for
murdering his family. There, Will discovers that he is Peter Ward, and created a new identity for himself in
order to cope with the grief of his family's death. When he was still in the mental hospital being treated, he
decided that he could not have been Peter Ward because he would never kill his family so, he made up a
new name in which he used the numbers on his wrist band ID (W1-1L 8-10-10). In turn, the audience learns
that everything that has occurred up to this point in the movie was just fantasy. Peter is informed by the
doctors that he claimed he was innocent. He returns to his house, which is actually abandoned and decrepit,
and converses with the projections of his wife and daughters, who claim that they believe in his innocence.
Peter eventually becomes closer to Ann and her daughter Chloe, and discovers that they were friends of his
family. Ann believes in his innocence and encourages Peter to live a new life in order to heal himself. Peter
eventually decides to return to his old house to confront his memories and, with Ann's help, realizes that he
did not kill his family. It was a local man named Boycie, who broke into the house and shot Peter's wife and
daughters. During the fight, Elizabeth tried to shoot Boyce and accidentally shot Peter, allowing Boyce to
recover the handgun and kill her. Peter was then accused of the murder.
Peter and Ann are suddenly attacked by Boyce and Ann's ex, Jack, who reveals that he had hired Boyce to
kill Ann so he could get revenge on her for divorcing him. Apparently, Boyce entered the wrong house and
accidentally killed Peter's family. Jack decides to kill Ann and set the house on fire, framing Peter for her
murder, and shoots Boyce as punishment for his early failure. As Jack tries to ignite a fire, Peter escapes,
overpowers Jack and saves Ann. Boyce douses Jack in gasoline in revenge for being shot, but Jack shoots
him in the head before being consumed by the flames.
While Ann and Chloe re-unite, Peter reenters the burning house and confronts the ghosts of his family; they
forgive him and tell him to leave to save himself. Peter barely escapes the fire, having finally discovered the
truth about the past and accepted his family's deaths. On his way out, he recovers the
scrapbook/journal/notebook he had hidden under a stair tread.
A year later, Peter has returned to New York City and published a book called Dream House about his recent
experiences. It was a bestselling book and he continued on with his life.

Client Name: Peter Ward

Psychiatric Diagnosis: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
DSM V criteria:
A. The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following have been
present:
(1) the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that
involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical
integrity of self or others
(2) the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.
B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one (or more) of the following ways:
a. recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts,
or perceptions
b. recurrent distressing dreams of the event
c. acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the
experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those
that occur upon awakening or when intoxicated)
d. intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or
resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
e. physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or
resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general
responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
a. efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
b. efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
c. inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
d. markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
e. feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
f. restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
g. sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage,
children, or a normal life span)
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by two
(or more) of the following:
(1) difficulty falling or staying asleep
(2) irritability or outbursts of anger
(3) difficulty concentrating
(4) hypervigilance
(5) exaggerated startle response
E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C, and D) is more than one month.
F. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or
other important areas of functioning.
a. Specify if:
Acute: if duration of symptoms is less than 3 months
Chronic: if duration of symptoms is 3 months or more
b. Specify if:
With Delayed Onset: if onset of symptoms is at least 6 months after the stressor
* Items under DSM V criteria italicized are those identified with the client in the movie

Format for Analysis

Date:

Students Name:

Name of the client you are assessing:

Name of the movie:
What is the chief complaint? (Why, in his/her own words, would the client say he or she is being
assessed?
Response:

Based on the above information and a close viewing of the movie, what questions would you raise
during history taking? What are some possible answers?
You might base your questions on the:
History of your clients present (and presenting) illness
Past psychiatric history, its treatment, and treatment outcomes
Psychosocial history
Past significant medical history
Response:

What observations do you have about the clients behavior?

Response:

In your opinion, is the diagnosis discussed above accurate?

Response:

What DSM V criteria supports (or negate) this diagnosis?

Response:

Could the client have any other psychiatric disorder? If so, list and include supporting DSM V criteria.
Response: