Film Review: ‘The Home’ is a Place You Don’t Want to Visit

Yuck. When a horror film can’t get a handle on why an audience would enjoy gross images, you wind up with an absolutely miserable experience. The Home is one such example, taking an intriguing premise and an unlikely leading man and absolutely wasting it on dream sequences, absurd gore, and twists that will make you audibly moan. The movie does not work in the slightest, minus the compelling performance at its center.

The Home is just gross, by and large. There’s a mean-spirited nature to it that borders on cruelty. It saps the film of any enjoyment the gore provides, as it never feels fun. There’s an attempt to add some emotional weight to things, but it’s so half-hearted that you almost wish it didn’t even bother. The idea within the flick works, it’s just the execution that simply does not.

Max (Pete Davidson) is a troubled young man who has gotten stuck in a life of petty crime in the years after his brother died. After his adoptive parents spare him jail time, he’s sentenced to community service as the live in handyman at a retirement home. Max has no interest in this, but he has less interest in serving time, so he heads to these secluded facility. There, he’s meant to clean up after the residents, though he’s immediately told to avoid the fourth floor, where those residents need special care. Of course, he also hears screaming coming from that floor on day one, so that seems like an unlikely proposition.

As he becomes more and more suspicious of what’s going on, he bonds with some residents, while learning a bit more about the operations of the retirement home, run by Dr. Sabian (Bruce Altman). The deeper he gets, the more nervous Max gets. There’s also nightmares that make him question his own reality and sanity. Then, the film opts for a third act twist that will have you rolling your eyes, or worse.

Pete Davidson is the best part of the film, for what that’s worth. He’s unlikely horror movie casting and his sarcastic nature does play well when things are still building. Once his character is sure something is up, Davidson has to do a lot of insanely stupid things, but in the quieter moments, he lends some minor weight to a thinly written role. No one else fares as well. Bruce Altman hams it up, while everyone else just plays their one note roles as best they can. A supporting player highlight is John Glover, but at the same time, there’s just so little here to highlight.

Filmmaker James DeMonaco is best known for The Purge franchise, which I largely bounced off of. A lot of his habits from that series are here as well, to the film’s detriment. The screenplay he wrote with Adam Cantor is overly pleased with its twists, while DeMonaco’s direction is all over the place. Never once does anything feel organic, so you’re left with an even hollower feeling than you’d have otherwise had.

The Home did absolutely nothing for me. If not for Pete Davidson, it would have been a total loss. It’s possible that folks who appreciate more of James DeMonaco’s previous works will grab on to this in a different way. For me, it’s completely forgettable and, while a different sort of swing from the filmmaker, just another miss. Alas.

SCORE: ★★