Heading Home was a film that was recommended to my by filmmaker/critic Jeremiah Kipp and Col. Scott Perry of The Colonel’s Crypt. As of late it’s been hard to review every single short film that’s sent my way; so they usually sit on the “Need to Review” shelf for months. Heading Home didn’t sit very long though, because I was expecting it in the mail for a while, so I got right to it when it came.
I’ll be first to admit that I really was not sure how well of a film it was going to be. I saw pictures of the film and read reviews on it, and I was not sure it was going to be something that I was going to enjoy. I also know that director Jane Roase has worked with the people from Biff Juggernaut Productions, which in the past have sent me some really, well to be blunt about it fucked up movies. So I was expecting something along the lines of a guy sticking something up his ass or a porn version of Re-animator. I didn’t get any of that with this flick. Instead what I got was a very surprisingly well short little short horror film, with some great lighting and some decent looking sets.
Heading Home is about a women named Marie whom for the most part has always avoided her Husband when it came to his work. Her Husband has a lab in their house, a lab that Marie was old to stay out of and she always does despite the odd and eerie sounds coming from within. However when children start to disappear from town Marie begins to research her husbands lab and finds that he is doing experiments of children. She then meets up with a man only known as the butcher whom agrees to help her stop her husband from hurting anyone else for the sake of his experiments.
Director Jane Rose does a great job adapting the Ramsey Campbell’s short story to film. It’s obvious that Rose know Campbell’s work well and put her heart and soul into this project, everything from the great shots, sets and acting were all a result of Rose’s vision. I gained more respect for the film when the “less is more” concept was used instead of over the top special effects, which could of easily been done. Don’t get me wrong, there are some pretty decent make-up effects used in the film, but they are used in a way that it does not take away from the effect of letting the viewer use their own imagination when it comes to the shocking revelation in the movie.
Overall, I found Jane Rose’s Heading Home to be a very well made film and she deserves a lot of credit for putting together such a fantastic piece of cinema. The fact that the film was shot on digital video would have always been ground for me not to review such a film, however with such great photography set designs and some great lighting, the look of the film came out very well, and I was able to look past the format in which it was presented and was able to focus more on the story and great achievement in filmmaking. Well worth checking out should it be playing in a festival near you.
– Horror Bob
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
