The lives of a set of pre-teen twins, living in a highly controlled, isolated apartment, are put in disarray when a new roommate appears in Casey Walker’s compelling Home Bodies, presented as part of the Fantasia Film Festival.
A camera tracks along a labyrinthian apartment, stopping at the cribs of two crying infants: one entirely in red, the other wholly in blue. A cut and it’s a dozen or so years later, and the infants are now preteens: female Red and male Blue. Still inside the apartment, they make their lives based upon the only rules they know in a strange isolation. But things are about to change; of course they are; otherwise we don’t have a movie, in Casey Walker’s sci-fi parable Home Bodies, presented as part of the Fantasia Film Festival.
Home Bodies is a heightened reality sci-fi, with specifics to their scenario of the isolated apartment and the way it works. The script by Adrian Murray and Marcus Sullivan asks the viewer to go along with the set-up and the rules of this world and live with the in-world logic. Here we have two kids, Red and Blue, who live under a specific set of auspices, and explore what happens when it shifts. Murray and Sullivan’s scripting sets up the two and their routines rather well and rather quickly. Red is messier, impulsive, quick ot get exasperated in following the rules. Blue is neat, clean, and orderly.
They live in a slightly dingy, not quite dilapidated but close, like a half- forgotten apartment from the 40s kept up just enough. Their food just appears in the fridge when they say it’s empty; everything is microwavable. They get just what they need: a ball to throw (and try to beat the record of un-dropped tosses: somewhere in the hundreds), food is done in moments, crayons to color (shades of red and blue specific). Trash is gone by throwing a bag to the darkened basement and repeating garbage three times. But they also can’t see outside at all. They have daily chats to Papa through a door that never opens. Papa’s voice is kinda robotic, cold; like cultists talking to an unseen leader. And the videotapes. Videotapes of an odd kid’s show that seems specifically for them appear with a suddenness. It’s a wonderful setup, filled with questions of what exactly is going on and why. How will it change? What’s the push? Fantastic questions.
It all changes one Noel (their 45th, clearly not a yearly thing) when a bald, silent man in yellow appears behind their tree. He’s Pal, played with a physicality by Ess Hodlmoser. Pal is their new pet. Eager for a change, Red immediately adopts him. Blue, the rule follower, does not like this shift in their life. He doesn’t react well, pushing back in smaller and then bigger ways, soon to a point of no return, completely changing their once peaceful coexistence, threatening safety and lives.
Red and Blue, played by Emma Ho and Ian Ho, respectively, are fantastic. With those names, it would indicate siblings, and that’s true. That chemistry that comes from a pair of kids who have spent their lives together comes across in spades. The viewer can see that kinship, of knowing how someone you’re that close to thinks and acts without having to say so. For a set of kid actors, both 16 now, they truly do engage and become whole.
Home Bodies is a story of trust and how violations of trust reverberate, especially when the person you’re supposed to rely on isn’t quite what you thought. Especially working with this age group when the world shifts as eyes open, the authority figures we believe in aren’t quite the godlike beings we may have built to be. The infallible became fallible, and the anxieties of the world are no longer hidden (a shift in the tapes indicates a darker world).
I rather liked Home Bodies. The design is awesome; the nooks and crannies of the apartment are lovely. I loved the sound of the lights coming on one by one down the expanding corridors. The set-ups are compelling. The story and character shifts were interesting. It’sa world of little horrors in the changes and cuts of moving from adolescence and looking into the cracks of the world. It’s unnerving, and one spends the viewing experience waiting for the ugliness to come to the front. While Home Bodies doesn’t quite stick the landing, the lead-up to it – watching Red and Blue’s world collapse from both their own actions and as designed by whatever Powers that Be is highly fascinating to get that point.
Home Bodies, written by Adrian Murray & Marcus Sullivan and directed by Casey Walker, is a slice of intricately designed horrors of adolescents and control; and how it all falls when trust cracks. Led by a pair of fantastic twin performers in Ian and Emma Ho, Home Bodies is worth a trip to its home. Home Bodies is presented as part of the Fantasia Film Festival, running in Montreal from July 16th through August 2nd, 2026.