“The Home” has some curiosity value attached to it: How will “Saturday Night Live” alum Pete Davidson fare in his first non-comedic performance? However, its major selling point might be that it comes from James DeMonaco, the filmmaker behind the commercially successful “The Purge” franchise. Audiences drawn to “The Home” for either reason might come out disappointed. Davidson shows he may not have the chops to carry a horror film, while DeMonaco fails to deliver any thrills this time. Ultimately, it’s a by-the-numbers effort that proves quite disappointing.
Davidson plays Max, a troubled young man sentenced to four months of community service at a retirement home in remote upstate New York. Max grew up in a foster home run by kind parents (Jessica Hecht and Victor Williams), though they are all now grieving the passing of his foster brother who died by suicide. The tenants of the retirement home (played by, among others, Mary Beth Piel and John Glover), receive him warmly and he immediately feels a kinship with them. Less welcoming are the physician in charge (Bruce Altman) and the two nurses (Mugga and co-screenwriter Adam Cantor) who work with him. Everyone warns him about the fourth floor of the home and the tenants who inhabit it. True to horror form, it doesn’t take Max long before he visits that forbidden storey and witnesses things he shouldn’t. Soon he’s mired deep in strange incidents and can’t figure out who’s friend or foe.
“The Home” starts well, with DeMonaco setting up a claustrophobic atmosphere by keeping the frame small and cluttered. The eerie atmosphere is further enhanced by foreboding music and gray-hued lighting with sun rays that come in as flares. The script, written by the director and Kantor, drops hints with ominous utterances from many characters. Davidson is filmed mostly in close-ups and midshots to signify Max’s isolation, and a cumulative sense of dread settles in. The audience now anticipates secrets to be revealed, characters to combat one another, detours and deviations in the plot, plus a few jump scares.
What transpires does not deliver on what’s promised. The people living on the fourth floor do not look human at all, oozing blood from their eyes and covered in obvious prosthetic makeup. Yet Max remains entranced by them, never questioning why they look that way. “The Home” tries to explain this away as Max never figuring out if this is real or just in his dreams. However, the script does not build the logic for this world, counting on the viewer’s acceptance. Max monitors the proceedings through a link that’s conveniently and mysteriously emailed to him. The plot is revealed over and over in scenes where one character or another explains everything to Max, though each scene negates all the exposition in the one preceding it. If the writing were stronger, this could be taken as a tongue-in-cheek horror device. Alas, the plot copycats “Rosemary”s Baby,” without adding any distinctive flair.
Davidson, meanwhile, is a vacuum at the center of it all, delivering a stilted and emotionless performance in which he almost never varies his facial expression — as if, freed from comic mugging, he can land only on passive skepticism. His line deliveries are marked by odd mid-sentence pauses, and he rattles off dialogue in lieu of a convincing characterization of someone grieving or scared for his life. Piel adds calming gravitas, though Davidson is unable to match her, rendering their scenes together absurd. The rest of the cast is forced to mug to the camera as DeMonaco frames them in visual compositions that recall “The Shining,” but without that film’s stylish sense of terror. All of the psychological tension attempted in the beginning makes way for a climactic bloodbath worthy of Freddy Krueger, robbing the film of a satisfying conclusion.
‘The Home” attempts to build on the films that inspired its creators. However, in so obviously paying homage to those, it reveals itself as inferior to them. It does not even reach the level of camp horror that audiences can merrily enjoy. In the end, good intentions and an adequate setup do not amount to much. This is one that should be purged.
Leave a Reply