A disturbing and well executed addition to the seemingly endless cycle of first-person-camera faux-reality horror movies, this one has a domestic setting that helps distinguish it from all the shaki-cam woodland / zombie / monster flicks. Never leaving the confines of its central house and surrounding area, it proves to be a compelling You Tube-era spin on the grim themes of WHO COULD KILL A CHILD?
A visual echo of a key cinematic inspiration, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT – an innocuous early scene in the woods – helps establish that middle class couple Adrian Pasdar and Cady McClain have moved to a rural house with their two young kids. Pasdar is a Pastor with a dark past (he was abused by his parents) he helps to erase by turning to drink and constantly larking about like an over-grown child. McClain is a therapist who bought a video camera for her work and is now using it to document her attempts to cure the increasingly apparent psychological disorders displayed by both their children. Pasdar keeps hijacking the camera to mug and ham it up, filming everything, including bedtime stories and meals. Meanwhile, the two sullen kids (persuasively played by real life siblings Amber Joy Williams and Austin Williams) remain unnaturally silent and start doing unnaturally unpleasant things.
Like a lot of the movies in this cycle, HOME MOVIE is a slow-burner and, because of its format, has to keep its story’s really horrible stuff off-camera. And, like the best of the movies in this cycle, this fact enhances its overall power. The build-up to the inevitably grim denouement is absorbing and unnerving. We watch the family’s decline via the “found footage” home movie excerpts of a successive array of special occasions : Halloween, an anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter. Initially, the cannily used format is used lightly : attention-seeking Dad (whose early tomfoolery and cheer is gradually eroded to reveal a very troubled individual) fools around with accents, references the Paris Hilton sex tape and stages amateur spoofs of the subjective stalking scenes of JAWS and PSYCHO’s shower murder.
The slow build of ominous events is quietly chilling : like many characters in these first person horrors, Pasdar is fixated by the idea of capturing everything on camera. This means he captures the uneasy sight of his son deliberately throwing a rock at his head during an otherwise harmless baseball game. He picks up uncomfortable family dinners in excruciating detail, catches a glimpse of his weird kids acting creepily conspiratorial (throughout they are briefly seen drawing something or talking to each other in some kind of coded fashion) and finds them calmly revealing a sandwich they have made using the family goldfish.
Pasdar and McClain are superb at conveying credible parental flaws and responses. Pasdar in particular is riveting as a guy, with many issues of his own, whose line of work entails the discussion of evil and whose reaction to the increasingly scary situation at home is to either live in denial or subject his children to a harrowing kind of exorcism. McClain who, at one key point, laments “I feel like I don’t even know these people…they’re strangers in my house” of her own kids, treats the two youngsters more as patients than her own kin, recording coldly straight to camera her observations on their behaviours.
The film’s moments of horror are very brief, almost subliminal : as disquieting as the fleeting glimpse of a crucified cat (on Christmas Day!) or the family dog’s severed head on a spike, are the incidental details, like the discovery of bite marks on both of the children. Writer/director Denham’s clever, inventive use of the format to document the descent of an initially normal-seeming family, extends to the striking finale, in which, after more than an hour of the audience witnessing the children’s behaviour from a distance or through a third party, the point of view switches to Jack and Emily. As with most of this cycle, the ending is devoid of hope and fulfils the sustained menace of what has gone before.
– Steven West
- 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
