Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives

Drinking vodka for 90 minutes straight would have caused me less brain rot than watching this fine film here.

This contrived and pretty dumb story unfolds over what feels like an eternity, even though the runtime is less than 90 minutes - always a good sign for a quality film. Also, for some reason, someone decided to shoot this in one take, and although I give my compliments to the crew that probably had to work a lot for this to get it done, in terms of serving the story this deciscion makes no sense whatsoever. With conventional editing, this would have been a short film. Still a bad one, but at least it would have been over sooner.

Oh, this plot. Too many times it's painfully obvious that some stupid things are only happening so the rest of the awful plot can happen. The dialogue is low-tier, the acting at times alright-ish, at times atrocious. The writing and directing are almost as bad as this director's other masterpiece PREY (Netflix), and yet he can continue to make his bad films. Why? How?

The score is mostly a continuous drone that drowns every trivial thing in pseudo-ominous synth soup and oftentimes fails to serve any of the weak beats and cues, thus making everything even duller than it had to be - which is quite the achievement.

The camera work is mostly appalling, both in operating and lighting. In important scenes, half the frame is basically unexposed. The shaky cam is strong here, and even worse than the BOURNE kind. It's just a camera stumbling around.

Except for the protagonist who is a true nothing character (we just know that she's pregnant and her name, no joke), none of the other characters' (all of who are even emptier than the protagonist) motivations make any sense.

If anything, this film once again proves that German filmmaking is as bad as their cars are good.

Skip this or watch it as a comedy, but get some booze first - you'll need it.

Or rather one shot - no pun intended. And also they did it three times! But looks like the third one was the best. If you like movies to have challenges .. well this has quite enough. Not sure if that is enticing for you or more like ... nope I don't want to watch it. I know I have a problem with found footage movies .. so there is that.

The movies that do one take (though technology has moved so far, you couldn't tell if it actually was one take, director insists it was and I believe him of course) ... well it is quite the harrowing thing to do. But I reckon you can also be free of any editing issue ... you just have everything right there ... well done and a really good main actress ... the movie stand and falls with her ... luckily it does stand! Even if there are some hiccups along the way ...

I was skeptical at first as I am not the biggest fan of one shot movies. But this feels different. Such a thrill. I was constantly at the edge of my seat for the duration of the movie, at least the last 40 Minutes. Farooq's acting is out of this world, what an achievement.

I was especially fond of the end. The pace is restless, the twists unexpected. I have never seen David Kross in a part like this, he is very convincing. Contrary to my initial belief Germans can do horror. I totally understand now why the film was celebrated at Fright Fest in London this year. I can imagine it must play even better in front of an audience in a theatre.

The first 20-30 minutes have their difficulties, but once the different characters enter the stage, the pacing gets better and better. It's a classic story, like those short horror stories you read at night as a teenager. But the location has been used very cleverly, sound and visuals are absolutely fine and doing this as a oner (one-shot) was a good and well executed decision. Especially the nightmarish vision has been edited really really good. Nilam Farooq is a believeable scream queen, Justus v Dohnanyi again shows he can play villains and the rest of the cast does a fine job. Nice little film from Germany.

Saw this at the Imagine film festival 2023 in Amsterdam. The start was not promising. The flickering light effects and the ghostly apparitions were far from original, looking like downtrodden cliches. Worse, in the first half one cannot help wondering whether these phenomena would ever lead to something substantial and original. And why bring in a heavily pregnant woman as main protagonist, knowing that every man will dismiss her sightings, saying these are due to hormones and hence not to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, the sound effects made serious attempts several times to emphasize that something very creepy was going on, or was about to happen very soon. Most of the times I missed the reason why, maybe being trained too much to ignore flickering lights and eerie sounds, deeming it weak techniques of the horror genre. In retrospect, I should have trusted the light and sound effects, and have allowed me to move along with the atmosphere that was building up.

Trust me, it all comes together in due course. Try to guess, if you want, who can really be trusted: the neighbor, or Maria's friend, or her father-in-law, or even her husband?? We won't know until the very end. Is there even a conspiracy going on, involving some or maybe all of them?? Demons out of the past find means to reach out and get their accomplices in the world of today.

All in all, the story could have started stronger, if only to avert my initial impression that flickering lights and sudden ghostly appearances were to become the main course. What Maria discovers in the cellar did not enough to steer me in the direction that she had just found something very significant there. Ultimately, her findings became the pillar of the unexpected plot twists ahead, with several even so unexpected turns of events. And that is where this movie is all about. Family history as of centuries ago reaches out into the current time, wanting its revenge. I scored 5/5 for the audience award when leaving the venue.