Dream House

Peter Ward (Daniel Craig) is a mental patient who recently left a psychiatric hospital and then a halfway house. Five years earlier, his wife (Rachel Weisz) and daughters Trish and Dee Dee were murdered at their home. During the attack, Peter was shot in the head, and so he has no memories of the murders. Instead, he has created a fantasy world in which his wife and daughters are fine. In his fantasy, he is a successful book publisher named Will Atenton. This is where the movie begins, and the audience is led to believe that Atenton and his family are real, but of course, they are the figments of a mental patient's imagination. Peter moves back to his abandoned old house and lives inside. It is boarded up and unsafe and covered with grafitti, 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 (Naomi Watts). In his mind (as Will Atenton), he is meeting Ann for the first time, but to her, she recognizes Peter as an old neighbor 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 still 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, 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.

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. In turn, the audience learns that everything that has occured up to this point in the movie was just fantasy. He 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 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 Boyce (Elias Koteas), who broke into the house and shot Peter's 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 Jack, who reveals that he had hired Boyce to kill Ann so he could get revenge against her for divorcing him. Boyce got into 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's legs as punishment for his early failure. As they try 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 reunite, Peter confronts the ghosts of his wife and children, who forgive him and say goodbye. Peter escapes, having finally discovered the truth and gained inner peace.

The Help

Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) is a middle-aged black maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son. Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) is another black maid whose outspokenness has gotten her fired many times and built up a reputation for being a difficult employee, but she makes up for this with her phenomenal cooking skills.

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating from the University of Mississippi to find that her beloved childhood maid, Constantine, has quit while she was away. Skeeter is skeptical because she believes Constantine would have written.

Unlike her friends, who have all married and are having children, Skeeter is interested in a career as a writer. Her first job is as a "homemaker hints" columnist in the local paper, and she asks Aibileen for her help in answering domestic questions. Skeeter becomes uncomfortable with the attitude her friends have towards their "help", especially Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her "Home Help Sanitation Initiative", a proposed bill to provide for separate bathrooms for black help. Amidst the era of discrimination based on color, Skeeter is one of the few who believe otherwise, and she decides to write a book, The Help, based on the lives of the maids who have spent their entire life taking care of white children.

The maids are at first reluctant to talk to Skeeter, because they are afraid that they will lose their jobs or worse. Aibileen is the first to share her stories after she overhears Hilly's initiative and realizes that the children that she is raising are growing up to be just like their parents. Her friend, Minny, has just been fired as Hilly's maid and has gone to work for a wealthy social outcast, Celia Foote. Minny initially declines to participate but later agrees to share her stories as well.

Skeeter writes a draft of the story with Minny and Aibileen's stories in it and sends it to Miss Stein, an editor in New York, who thinks there may be some interest in it, but requires at least a dozen more maids' contributions before it can become a viable book. Believing that the book will only be publishable during the Civil Rights movement, which she likewise believes is a passing fad, Stein advises Skeeter to finish the book soon. No one comes forward until after Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi – with racial tensions running high, the maids realize that Skeeter's book will give them an opportunity for their voices to be heard, and Skeeter suddenly has numerous stories to include. Minny shares one last story with Skeeter and Aibilene, which she calls the "Terrible Awful", to ensure that no one will think that the book was written about Jackson, Mississippi. As revenge for firing her and accusing her of stealing, Minny bakes a chocolate pie and delivers it to Hilly. After Hilly has finished two slices, Minny informs her that she has baked her own feces into the pie. Minny tells Aibilene and Skeeter that by adding that part into the book, Hilly will try to prevent anyone from figuring out that she made her eat human feces and will convince the town that the book must be about some other town.

The book is accepted for publication and is a success, much to the delight of Skeeter and the maids. She shares her royalties with each of the maids who contributed, and is offered a job with a publishing company in New York.

These three stories intertwine to explain how life in early-1960s Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet despite the intimate quarters in which whites and blacks live, there is always a certain distance between them because of racial lines. The plot device of a book about servants' lives throwing the upper class into a panicked reaction is similar to the 1942 Romance-Comedy The Affairs of Martha directed by Jules Dassin.