Genre buddy and fellow root canal survivor Rob Hunter came to my aid this week when it was time for title selection. I was stupidly about to put in The Wild Hunt, which has something to do with LARPing and virgins or something, when the Foreign Objects author suggested I try something a little more sub-titled. Dream Home is the story about the American dream taking place in Hong Kong. Young Cheng Lai-sheung (Josie Ho) is a phone representative for a bank in Hong Kong and all she wants out of life is a nice flat with a view of the ocean for her ailing grandfather to live in. She’ll stop at nothing to get that home, from scraping together every penny and working two extra jobs. After raising enough capital to buy into the flat, the sellers decide to ask for more money and Cheng reacts completely reasonably. For a psychopath.

Movies and television have a long history of strong, likable anti-heroes who bend and break the law, cross morally questionable boundaries, and generally behave in a highly inappropriate manner. Falling Down‘s D-Fens, Escape From NY‘s Snake Plissken, Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle, Dirty Harry‘s Harry Callahan… these are characters at odds with the world around them who take matters into their own hands and do terrible things, and yet we love them until the very end. But can an anti-hero go too far? Can an otherwise likable, sympathetic, and cheer-worthy character cross an irreversible line? Cheng Lai Sheung (Josie Ho) has had a singular dream since she was a young girl living in Hong Kong. One day she’s going to buy a condo overlooking the harbor, and it will be big enough to share with her family without anyone having to share a room. As an adult she’s inching closer to achieving the dream with a healthy savings account and an apartment already picked out at the luxurious Victoria Bay high-rise. But then her father gets sick, and the insurance won’t cover his medical bills, and prices in the real estate market continue to blossom, and she can’t quite get a mortgage loan even from the bank where she works… and soon Sheung’s dream is slipping further and further away from reality. So she takes matters into her own hands in an effort to reduce the cost of her dream home. And if that means reducing the number of neighbors in