Home Movie (2008)

Well I really am no fan of the found footage movies with the shaky hand-cam stuff. The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, The Last Exorcism it's just a few examples of movies I really didn't like. But I wanted to give this one a try because the theme evil kids does appeal to me. Yes the way of filming was no fun experience and the parents of the kids were really annoying especially the father. Unfortunately the movie focuses mostly on the parents talking and doing quite silly not much on what the kids are doing. I would have loved to see how the kids would have been planning are their evil acts instead. They look lovely and that is always a plus when they eventually turn out to be little monsters. That doesn't take away though that the result of what they did when filmed even when it's only shown a few seconds is quite an effective shock much more than everything they did was shown in detail. The finale could have been better. All in all enjoyable but not for a re-watch.

My response has a few spoilers so if you've not seen this film, here's a warning before you read on.I quite understand why some viewers did not like Home Movie, however I actually found this film quite disturbing and very intelligently rendered. Of course there will be lots of folks who hate the film because while it is a horror film, it is not scary and refuses to explain itself in broad and excessively obvious ways. It relies more on intimation that explanation. Too many horror films use jumps and starts to compensate for a poorly scripted story and fortunately nowhere in this film is there any such pandering to horror sensationalism and clichés. Instead it relies on a really solid idea - young twin sibling who are being abused off-camera by their father become increasingly sullen and withdrawn as they refuse to participate in their parents' on-camera charade of domestic bliss and pretense of happy families.These kids fit right into the generic "evil child" mold of super-intelligent children who are always one step ahead of adults that refuse to think the worst of their darling cherubs. Yet unlike some evil child films where the kids are just evil because the kids are just evil, Jack and Emily are given a motive for their actions, which is that their upstanding Lutheran pastor father, David, has been abusing them and getting away with it. David is, of course, so hell-bent on hiding his abuse that he tells his kids that its good to have secrets as he plays happy families on camera and constantly tries to get his kids to participate in the contrivance. Meanwhile their psychiatrist mother lives in ignorance and denial of what is really going on and is more concerned about her professional career and treating other child patients than her own children. In order to get close to her own children, she needs to treat them like patients, and then congratulates herself for "curing" them. This is quite a disturbed family and its impressive how skillfully the film achieves this without being blatantly obvious about it.The scene where the children refuse to pray before the thanksgiving meal, with their father wearing his pastor's uniform, demonstrates the anger and resentment the children feel towards him and what kind of monster of a man he really is - ignoring their protestations and cries for help and continuing like nothing is happening. He has a compulsion to record himself being a good dad to somehow leave a record of what a nice guy he is, but as the children continue to misbehave, his (self) deception unravels. The exorcism scene is truly disturbing as he would prefer to blame Satan for his children's behavior than look more closely at himself. In the car when the mother says to the kids that they shouldn't keep secrets, Dad pipes up and says, "Secrets can be good". Warning bells! The scene where the father is preparing his sermon demonstrates how contrived his outward persona is - even the words of his sermon seem contrived and hollow. Everything about this guy is pretense and deceit. It is little wonder that the children attack a child named Christian.The escalating levels of animal torture and mutilation, as they graduate from bugs and goldfish to increasingly larger creatures, of course point to the inevitability of the children eventually attacking their parents - it comes as no surprise, yet the film plays on our knowledge of this, using it to create a sense of dread. This film is not about trying to guess the surprise ending. There are no surprises. But it's not the "what" that makes this film interesting, it's the "why". One rarely finds probing character studies in horror films, but in Home Movie we are given just that.

The positive reviews for this turd are clearly written by shills. The acting is abominable. The characterizations are incredibly inconsistent and not the least bit real. I laughed out loud when the dad showed up in a priest's collar! WTF?!?! This douchey moron who farts through the whole movie and treats his kids like crap is a man of the cloth?? And I'd love to get an actual count of the number of fart jokes they use. FART JOKES!!! What??!!?! And the mom is DOCTOR mom, child psychiatrist, but she had the most ludicrously f-ed up kids on earth and doesn't do anything about it until they're actually trying to kill HER. And there's NO STORY. It's just random, meaningless clips strung together and then the kids gradually do weirder (albeit a totally contrived type of 'weird') things. But the kids don't go from normal, happy kids to supernatural freaks. They go from weirdos to violent weirdos. It's pitiful. It's like a closet-gay jock with a drinking problem made this movie. And the "found footage" aspect is pointless, because they don't stick to the "rules" of found footage. What a relentless waste of time.

I found the film's clever concept and almost Spartan production a welcomed change to overwrought, special effects-driven horror flicks. This film's austerity nicely compliments its premise—namely, that these are a series of video clips that chronicle a family's shocking collapse under the weight of severe metal illness. I suspect anyone who has worked with families will appreciate the role denial plays in perpetuating and even facilitating dysfunctional behavior—even more so when it involves metal illness.Contrary to the claim in an accompanying review, I find the disturbing behavior well (even clinically) explained and revealed at a pace that keeps the movie engrossing but plausible. I suspect parents who enjoy the reality/horror genre will find this movie especially engaging.