The Home

For Eye With The 
Syringe On Top

The Home
Directed by James DeMonaco
USA 2025
MIramax
Screened at FrightFest Thursday 21st August

Well now, it has to be said that the only reason I bought a ticket to The Home, the opening movie of this year’s August edition of FrightFest, is because I wanted to get an early look in at the FabPress stall before everybody else had picked it clean. Imagine my surprise then, to go into this movie relatively blind and to find that it’s one of the better films I’ve seen at FrightFest over the years.

The Home starts off by introducing us to orphan Max, played after a few flashbacks by Pete Davidson. However, after his slightly older brother is pronounced dead from suicide, his young life kind of goes off the rails and he acts out a lot, using his incredible skills as an artist, for example, to cover a property in graffiti art. However, rather than do jail time, his foster dad gets him community service as a new maintenance man in an old people’s home called Green Meadows.

It’s here he gets to know residents like Lou, played by John Glover and the brilliant Mary Beth Peil as Norma, who befriends Max. However, we also get the typical ‘don’t go in the basement’ style horror set up when he’s told quite clearly by his new employers that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t set foot on the locked, fourth floor. It’s out of bounds to everyone except those who know how to give the residents upstairs that ‘special medical care’ they require.

Okay, so an okay set up and it’s a nicely put together film, with the actors all between them doing a really good job at making you care for them. It looks good and, although it maybe has one too many dream sequences, it really works at transmitting that there’s something more important at stake than what the audience might be expecting the pay off to be. 

Now, I’ll go right ahead and say that I’ve once again proved myself to be accent blind with this movie. All the way through I thought it was a British movie, made with a British cast and crew and set in the UK. Nope... it’s a US film with an American cast, all set in the US. So, I’m definitely unreliable for being able to figure out that kind of thing. I think its because most countries have such a bombardment of American media into their lifestyle that it makes their accents seem normal compared to everything else. 

However, it’s got nothing to do with my deaf ear to human dialects which rendered the conclusion of this movie something I totally didn’t see coming. And regular readers to my blog will know how hard it is for a film to actually surprise me so, it’s no small thing when I say that the final twist or solution to the film is masterfully misdirected and not telegraphed at all, because I’ll tell you now... the surprise really works on this one. 

Also, though... and I think it’s no surprise given the poster to the movie... it’s also something that people who are squeamish about eyeball injury should steer clear of. There are a couple of gory set pieces throughout the movie which punctuate the slow creepiness of the central protagonist’s journey towards a final solution but, in the last twenty minutes or so, as a certain sequence plays out, this film turns into an absolute blood bath. And that’s after you see syringes plunging into different peoples eyeballs a number of times... yeah, the camera doesn’t flinch on this one and I’m assuming CGI must have been involved (I hope) as the effects do look kind of practical. 

And I don’t think I’m going to say much more about The Home other than I was delighted with the pay off and I honestly didn’t see it all coming. This was a strong opening film for FrightFest to start this year’s proceedings with and I absolutely loved it. Looking for a Blu Ray release as soon as possible now. I hope this one gets cinema distribution over here too... it was great.