Home Movie
Everyone in their upstate suburban community agrees that The Poes are the picture-perfect family: Pastor dad David, psychologist mom Clare, and the adorable 10-year-old twins Emily and Jack. But something has gone horribly wrong with the Poe children between Halloween and Easter, a grisly descent into madness and murder that David and Claire have captured on video. This found footage will reveal the shocking series of events. This is their HOME MOVIE.
Adrian Pasdar of HEROES and Cady McClain
Rating: 
(out of 5 reviews)
List Price: $ 19.98
Price: $ 9.72
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Anthony Pittore said
September 7 2010 @ 6:36 am
Review by Anthony Pittore for Home Movie
Rating:
Starring Adrian Pasdar (‘Heroes’) and Cady McClain (‘All My Children’), ‘Home Movie’ tells the tale of a young family who has recently moved to the isolated countryside of upstate New York. At first, all seems perfect. The couple, a pastor and a child psychologist, is happy and in love. The house is beautiful. And, they have two adorable children. Soon after, however, the happy couple’s perfect life begins to spiral out of control as their ten-year-old son & daughter start to show signs of aggressive and psychotic behaviour. As time passes, the children become worse & worse, eventually becoming a fight for survival between the parents and the children, all alone in their picturesque country home.
‘Home Movie’ continues the recent trend of point-of-view horror/thriller flicks like ‘Rec,’ ‘Paranormal Activity,’ and ‘Cloverfield,’ which has been helping to deliver unto the horror genre some of the scariest films in a long time. ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ while not the first point-of-view horror film, set the bar for fear high and would be one of the major trendsetters for this style of film-making. It’s cheap, it’s effective, and (what I think makes it scariest) it’s more personal than standard film-making. ‘Home Movie’ is one of the films that very much takes advantage of this more ‘personal’ film-making style.
Technically speaking, the film is rather impressive. For what was clearly a very modest budget, they pulled a couple of marginally recognizable stars in Pasdar and McClain, thus guaranteeing at least adequate performances in what could have been a couple of difficult roles. The script is solid and keeps the pace going steady without jumping too fast into the kids going crazy, utilizing a nice, slow descent into madness. The shakicam, an element many people worry about with POV films, is not too bad and much of the film includes the camera just sitting on a table or desk instead of being hauled around by someone. It never gets bad enough to cause any kind of motion sickness like ‘Cloverfield.’ One issue I did have with the film is simple: These are two of the worst parents I’ve ever seen in a movie. No matter what the kids were doing for a huge portion of the movie, the children were never punished, never scolded, never lectured. One would think that a pastor and a child psychologist would be familiar with the necessity of discipline. It took one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen a kid do before the child psychologist could realize that maybe, just maybe, her kids were a little screwy in the head. Granted, no parent wants to believe their kid is bad. . . but, it’s pretty textbook that violence, over-aggression, and abuse of small animals is a pretty serious indication of what’s to come. However, this is forgivable for the sake of the story, even if it does cause a few head-shaking moments.
Overall, ‘Home Movie’ is a expertly creepy & freaky horror/thriller with some of the best suspense & tension I’ve seen in a while and one hell of a wicked conclusion. It also continues to prove that point-of-view horror is a great tool that can be used in independent cinema to keep budgets low and keep scares high.
Final Verdict: 8/10 – This is the kind of movie that will make you not want to have kids.
-AP3-
ampad said
September 7 2010 @ 7:21 am
Review by ampad for Home Movie
Rating:
A set of disturbed twins, a set of naive parents, and a house in the middle of the woods. That is basically the setup of the movie. This movie did move slow in the beginning. However, I think it was done so that the viewer could witness the children slowly going crazy. What I found interesting about the movie was the profession of the parents. The mother is a doctor and the father is a preacher. Both mother and father have their theories on why their children are displaying abnormal behavior. The mother suggest that it is organic, thus she prescribes medication. The father believes that there is something evil in the house, thus he preforms a cleansing and a failed exorcism.
The movie does leave the viewer with many questions. For instance there is a scene where the closet door closes by itself. This is the only paranormal activity that is showed in the movie. There is a scene where the children wake up moaning, the mother runs into their room and finds bite marks all over them. The kids claim that some man in the closet bit them. The mother seems confused, thinks her husband might of got drunk and starting biting the kids. However, the kids are kicked out of school for trapping and biting a class mate. This makes the mother believe that her children are biting each other.
I believe that if you enjoy this movie (depending on religious beliefs and ideology) that you will pick one side or the other. Is there evil in the house, or are the kids suffering from some organic mental illness? The last 5 minutes of the movie left me with a very sick feeling. All in all I believe that the movie succeeds in making the viewer feel uneasy and giving you something to think about once it is over.
Cleo said
September 7 2010 @ 7:42 am
Review by Cleo for Home Movie
Rating:
I was expecting this to be an indie film that would drone on in the background as I surfed the Web. I tuned in because this stars Adrian Pasdar (Near Dark) and Cady McCain (All My Children) and I wanted to see what these rarely seen actors deigned to do. But I found myself watching intently because the storytelling is so strong. Told entirely through handicam recordings made by the nuclear family, it looks like non-working class liberally educated parents move their two children to some pastoral setting (bobo hippies are not my favorite people) but their marriage seem to on edge and they don’t really have a relationship with their silent children. And the colors are all wrong for a magalogue lifestyle. When the camera records the ugly truths, I should have sensed hysteria and outrage but apparently the parents are sunk so far down in shocked sorrow that they are the walking depressed which isn’t that far off from being high functioning retards. When the kids dare the audience to not look away, I instantly flashed to Michael Haneke’s reasoning for Funny Games starring Naomi Watts.
Gerardo Rene Garcia said
September 7 2010 @ 8:03 am
Review by Gerardo Rene Garcia for Home Movie
Rating:
For an indie film it’s ok.
I have two qualms about the movie:
1.) The pacing of the movie should have been a bit faster, although I understand it’s a “Home Movie”, but some parts were dragging when it should have picked up.
and
2.) One thing that I did not like is the lack of background of the two children. The viewer should have been given more insight to their upbringing.
Overall the movie is creepy during some of the scenes regarding some of the activities the children do to some of the animals.
Enjoy!!
Stan C said
September 7 2010 @ 8:42 am
Review by Stan C for Home Movie
Rating:
I bought this junk. This movie goes on and on. The kids are freaks but WE as the viewer will never know why. There is some gore, but forget about seeing any. There is a quick shot of the crucified cat… mom and dad are drugged… but again, why??? The best part of the movie was the end. Only because it was over!