Home Sick (2007)

This is a great movie for all gore fans. It has wackiness, Horror ,a bit a of dementia and plenty of gore and blood.The premise is pretty crazy; as a room full of friends get together for a reunion of sorts. They are soon visited by Mr. Suitcase; who is wonderfully portrayed by Horror icon Bill Mosely. If you are familiar with his Otis character, then you know what to expect. He shows up with a suitcase full of razors,asks the kids to name specific people they hate and then performs a manic self inflicting blood letting act on himself. This somehow has conjured up some Demon like beast right out of Tobe Hoopers Fun House to kill off the said mention hated people. One of the friends actually just names "Everyone in the room" out of spite, not knowing what he has caused. Bill Mosley's scene reminded me of the crazy hitch hiker in 1976's Texas Chainsaw Massacre.The only other two actors I recognized are Tom Towels as the twisted Red neck uncle and Tiffany Shepis as the vixen. She bares her boobs and soul as she actually does a great performance upon finding her dead mother.She really has developed into a horror scream queen herself and I really wish Rob Zombie would get her to act in his next film.The rest of the actors are their for support mainly and they act bad on purpose. It's so over the top, that you know the director calls for it. These kids are really messed up. Dark circles around the eyes, maniacal laughter and are gore hounds themselves....and they die in the goriest and nastiest fashions imagined. I also found it funny to see that the one level headed character; Mark, played by Forrest Pitts; actually has a sort of Brad Pitt look and Accent.Did I mention the gore? Buckets & Buckets and yet still looked Tom Savini worthy. there are also bone crunches, decapitations, and head bashing. In fact the head kills seems to be the demon's first choice when hacking and slashing.All in All this flick is a great entry into Horror/Gore cinema. I recommend for all fans of the genre.

Bill Moseley portrays the Suitcase Man, who crashes a party of twenty somethings and asks each of them, who is one person they hate and would like to see dead. His suitcase is full of razor blades, btw. Pretty upset that old Suitcase stopped in and a little scared, they all give him a name, but one guy makes the mistake of naming the whole bunch at the party should die (the guy is an idiot, and was just being a dick). Soooooooo, not only do the people they named start to end up in ultra gory deaths, but the whole group is now under siege from a creepy superhuman death machine. This is a film that could have been made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, and would be a gore classic. The gore effects are pretty cheap, but effective, and the story is pretty original. After several deaths have all ready occurred, the head goofball, decides the best place for the survivors to go to fight off the killer, is with Uncle Johnny (Tom Towles) who is a chili connoisseur, and also has a house full of many many weapons. This is a seventies style slasher movie, but with a real attitude, and way over the top on just about every level. All I can say, is "Home Sick" could have been a Masters of Horror 2-part episode, and might have been the best one. Very very gross, extremely and I mean extremely gory, and a good sense of humour that gives a wink and a nod to gorehounds. Take a look at the reviews at IMDb, and they all pretty much agree with me, that this is a must-have. Although Moseley's role is pretty small, he is highly effective in his usually creepy self. But most of the kudos go to Tom Towles, in one of his best and funniest roles ever. If you don't like small independent productions operating on a shoestring, but making the most out of every nickel, you should probably stay away, because this is for the fans that consider H G Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, and would love see more of his brand of gore films. "Home Sick" is his brand of gore, and mine too.The DVD is great, and has a commentary which I expect to watch tonight. It should be a hoot.

I was fortunate enough to catch this at a limited screening in my home town. I initially attended because it is my sincere belief that Tom Towles is one of America's most over-looked actors; consider, for example, his insightfully acted performance in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986, McNaughton). I was fascinated that he was going to be gracing a local film.To be honest, I was expecting very little from Home Sick. There seem to be a dozen indie horror filmmakers for every street. Most are sloppy gorefests that are, at best, terrible pseudo-hybrid remakes with descriptions like The Blair Witch Project meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. However, it became increasingly apparent as the film rolled that Wingard's Home Sick owed more to Renoir than Riami.The rainy shots that play under the opening credits, for example, seemed to be a direct homage to Renoir's unfortunately obscure Nana (1926). I, of course, attributed this to an over-ambitious hope that someone else (a filmmaker from Alabama, no less!) has seen this forgotten masterpiece. After the screening, though, my suspicions were confirmed; the delightfully kind Adam Wingard did acknowledge his debt to Renoir (as well as Resnais, Bergman, Schlondorff and, perhaps most surprisingly - Russian fantasy-film icon Aleksandr Rou!) However, he assured me, as I was also able to assess myself throughout the screening, that he was aiming for more than Altmanesque nods to the art-house classics that he adored.What refrains Wingard from merely imitating the grand successes of the important filmmakers that came before him is that his dystopian outlook is injected into a clever and non-judgmental deconstruction of the gorefest horror subgenre. Wingard has a perceptive understanding of this subgenre that I know I haven't seen since Zulawksi and his masterwork, Possession (1981). Many would here point to Miike as a more apt and comparable filmmaker, but it seems evident, at least to me, that Miike is a poor man's Kiyoshi Kurosawa with all of the aggravating flaws of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and none of the master filmmaker's attributes.Home Sick suffers a terribly low rating here at IMDb and I am not surprised as many seem to be coming from irate Bill Moseley fans expecting another Essence of Echoes (2002, Rikert). Wingard surpasses Rikert and his embarrassing attempts at cinematic innovations by embracing that film does in fact have a history without resorting to simply visually quoting the best decisions of great filmmakers, such as Tarkovsky, Clement or Deren.Home Sick is an original masterpiece and undoubtedly the most important horror film since Dreyer's Vampyr or Bergman's Hour of the Wolf.

I was extremely surprised to see how well done Home Sick was. Not only as a horror film, but in its presentation and its development as any film. Adam Wingard is a young director and you can tell a huge horror and film fan. This film will give you an idea of how great a fairly low budget film can be. I went in thinking it would be more of a thriller. I was thrilled to find out it was a true slasher gore fest. I was laughing uncontrollably. The movie was packed with great special effects and once the story develops, it is a real fun and entertaining film. The cinematography and sound effects were also really impressive. I can't wait to see what this team of filmmakers will come up with next. I really believe Home Sick is a truly entertaining and well done horror film.