A ne’er-do-well’s community service at an assisted living home goes awry with secrets and death in James DeMonaco’s The Home.
The Home is a film I can ALMOST recommend to some film fans, those of a certain sensibilities and tastes. These tastes are not of the discerning elevated horror. Maybe more of a playfully bad taste. Without getting into spoiler territory, the back end will please those who love the wild and weird, the “I can’t believe they did that” with a laughing abandon of sense and style. The type of thing Severin or Vinegar Syndrome might dig up from 1978, little seen since a short run as the middle of a 42nd Street triple feature. Like many of those films, and here’s the “almost”, one must work through a mostly middling first hour. Not a bad first hour, but one with a lot of frustrating dead ends (making sense in the end), following Pete Davidson trying to act, and odd choices. But it does have a spirited John Glover performance and a ton of practical gore to even it out.
You know what, I do recommend it for those who gleefully love the trashy and strange, who eagerly await the next Synapse Video sale. The Home is not a good movie. No, sirrie, Joe Bob. But it does work for what it is. Roll with it and enjoy.
Let’s expand that too-dense going everywhere paragraph above. The Home, directed by The Purge series’ James DeMonaco and written by DeMonaco and Adam Carter, follows internet punching bag Pete Davidson as a constant screw up on his last chance. Unseated in life in the dozenish years since his one true connection, an older foster brother, died, his foster parents set him up as a custodian in a secluded assisted living home (assisted living so the residents can be just old enough to need some help but not be decrepit). One with strange rules of where to go or not, time on some things, and the like. Enough to offset him at the start, with the expected strangeness starting immediately. Residents are strange, he gets hints that something is wrong, screams no one else seems to hear him come through the vents, etc. 
It’s a little bit of a frustrating start. The above bits set up a lot of narrative dead ends, with some sigh-inducing notes of “ew, old people doing anything is scary and weird” (a sad touch in Ti West’s X, an easy “joke” in The Home.”) Those dead ends of the start make sense in the end when the tipping happens, giving an “ooooh I see.” But it shouldn’t be frustrating for the audience to get there. And a countless number of dream sequences. About three too many. Hard to create tension if it’s known to be a dream. Even if it brings creative blood use during them.
The Home delivers on the gore. Enough skinless, or degloving of, folks to make Clive Barker happy. Lucio Fulci would wince at the sheer amount of eye trauma. So. Many. Pierced. Eyes. (um… spoilers…I guess). When the film slides into the grindhouse, there’s more blood than The Shining Elevators. Glorious. And most, if not all, is practical. Whatever might be CG is too quick to notice and glaring among the multitude of arterial sprays and severed limbs. 
I wish the film had the same tone and gonzo attitude in the lead-up. Dammit, DeMonaco, lean into the grit and grindhouse! There’s a sleazy, grimy movie just bursting to come out. It seems like DeMonaco was ashamed to be making this sort of flick. Rework it, get giddy with the end, and expand to the exposition. If it wants to be that movie, if it is ultimately that movie… BE that movie. There are strange moments here and there that change the film stock to scratchy third-generation off-putting coloring, hints that this was the intention. Interestingly, the washed-out grey kinda-snowing exterior shots often harken to an 80s British nature.
It doesn’t help that Pete Davison is unsuited for the lead role. Honestly, I’ve liked him as a secondary character. He was surprisingly not-awful in Bodies Bodies Bodies and I Want You Back. While good in The King of Staten Island, he was playing himself. As our lead in The Home, every line is read about the same way with the exact cadence. It’s all bland. On the other hand, the residents play the film they are in well. The standout, as he often is, is John Glover. Glover is having a blast, chewing all the scenery and living it up. Bruce Altman’s Doctor Sabian is suitably sly and sinister; he’s a joy.
I foresee The Home is going to be trashed rather widely. Even the review above has plenty of little backhanded compliments. But overall, I dug it for what it was, or more honestly, what it eventually became. The first half is uneven, with frustrations of expected moments mixed with good gore and moments, led by a bad performance. But stick through the middling and be rewarded with a truly ridiculous, over-the-top, and wild blood-splattered finale that had me, and those who stuck it out in my screening, cackling with manic glee. Thus, for those of certain tastes, visit The Home. Everyone else might not want to come in.