Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: James DeMonaco
Starring: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Bruce Altman
Pete Davidson has the sort of face that makes you expect him to be an obnoxious and annoying screen presence but every time I watch one of his movies he wins me over with his likeable charisma, even when he's playing characters who are written as obnoxious and annoying. Charisma and acting chops are two very different things however, and Davidson simply doesn't possess enough of the latter to carry a film like director James DeMonaco's The Home. We warm to Davidson here, but he fails to convince us that his character is in any peril, which is detrimental to a horror movie.
Like the superior 2025 Swedish horror movie of the same name, The Home is centred on a troubled and wayward young man who finds himself spending time in a retirement home. Where the horrors of its Nordic cousin were of the supernatural variety, here they're man-made, with Davidson uncovering a conspiracy that goes right to the corridors of American power, as movie conspiracies so often do.
Davidson plays Max, a twentysomething with mental health issues stemming from the suicide of his older foster brother (one of his tattoos reads "thicker than blood"). After being arrested for painting a mural with a climate change message, Max's foster father pulls some strings and gets him off a prison term. The catch is that he'll have to perform community service by living and working as a porter in a retirement home.
In the home, Max finds the nightmares he's been suffering since his childhood trauma becoming more intense. He grows suspicious of his orders to stay off the fourth floor, and when he inevitably investigates he finds unimaginable horrors and unearths the aforementioned conspiracy.
Best known as the guiding force of the Purge series, DeMonaco proves an ill-fit for the sort of slow burn horror attempted here. There's an over-reliance on telegraphed jump scares, and DeMonaco lazily repeats the tired old "phew, it was only a dream" gag so many times that it becomes a boy who cried wolf scenario, diluting our ability to be unnerved by anything we're presented with as we wait for a cut to a sweaty Max springing awake in his bed. As previously mentioned, the biggest issue with The Home is that we never feel like Max is in any real danger until the climax, when the script calls for the central conspiracy to be explained by a villain in the manner of of a James Bond movie. Davidson struggles to convey Max's terror, but the script and direction certainly aren't doing him any favours.
As with his Purge movies, DeMonaco beats us around the head with a political message delivered in a manner so clunky it's unlikely to change anyone's mind. This time it's climate change and the indifference of older generations to the mess they're creating for the young. It's made clear that a storm is coming to the film's Eastern seaboard setting, with unsubtle news reports constantly playing on televisions in the background. At one point Max stumbles upon a scene of horror soundtracked by a news report on oil drilling. What's annoying about this is that the subtext is clear in Max's fruitless attempts to make the boomer residents wise up to what's really happening in the home; there's simply no need to assume the audience are idiots who need it rammed down our throats.
There's a stretch at the beginning of The Home before the horror plot kicks in where it plays like an engaging drama about a troubled young man getting a new lease of life in the company of seniors. The great character actor John Glover is brilliant as an aging hippy who maybe sees something of his younger self in Max, who also forms an endearing bond with Norma (Mary Beth Piel), a glamorous resident who is similarly struggling with grief. Because Davidson can't help but flirt with every woman who stands in his eyeline, there's a surprising but welcome sexual tension between Max and Norma that almost fools us into thinking we're in for a modern day Harold and Maude. No such luck.
The Home is on UK/ROI VOD from August 22nd.
