Home Movie

Home Movie takes what you've seen done many times before in the hand held horror genre and turns it on it's head. What makes this film so different is that it has a strong and engaging character based story about a family of four doing their best to live the American dream and pairs it with some unsettling images and a real sense of dread throughout. I view this film as The Shining meets The Omen meets The Blair Witch Project. This is the type of film that stuck with me days after I watched it. The effectiveness of this film has a lot to do with how good the acting is. They don't overact or play it up for the camera, which makes it feel like your taking a genuine peek into life of this family.

Bottom Line: This is a slow burning and unsettling horror film without the gimmick or stupidity you normally get with films of this type. I highly suggest it.

Just got back from seeing the world premiere of this brilliant pic at Fantasia festival. I wasn't expecting to see something of this caliber! It took all of three minutes for me to buy this film's central conceit hook line and sinker. The premise is relatively straightforward. The Poe's are young parents who like to film everything. Their children are strangely cold and possibly psychotic. Shot entirely from a home video camera (albeit they must own a very nice professional HD cam) the Poe's document their daily lives as their children begin to exhibit increasingly odd and cruel behavior.

While this film is technically low budget, the acting and production values are top notch. The children in particular (the actors themselves are brother and sister) are chilling from start to finish. And what a finish! Brilliant stuff! I hope this pic takes the festival. Best film I've seen so far this year! Excellent use of the hand-held camera trope to pull the audience into the daily lives of the Poe's and to ramp up the tension to an almost unbearable level. People will be putting their kids up for adoption in droves after this.

After the film, the producer was on hand to answer questions. They're still looking for a distributor and while I'm sure they'll have no problem once the early reviews get out, if you have a chance to see this at a festival don't pass it up! It might be awhile before it hits wide release, to say nothing of DVD.

Sometimes I think i'll never see anything fresh and new because it's all been done before, and then I watched this. I was flipping through some on demand channels and watched the preview, had to order it. After the movie was done, I found myself thinking about it for days and wanting to see it again so I could look for clues that I might have missed, that's the sign of a good movie in my opinion. I find it hard to believe so few people have seen this little gem, as I had a hard time even finding reviews for it. Oh.. and that guy from Hero's, Adrian Pasdar, fantastic in this! I never cared for the guy when watching Hero's but in this movie he showed he really has some acting skills, I lost myself in his acting he was THAT good.

After I watched this, my sleep was disturbed for several nights running. Much more interesting than any teen slasher pic you've seen, this descent into every parent's nightmare has a solid script, is full of top-notch acting from all the players, and the kind of psychological tension that makes you hold your breath. Add a big twist at the end and you've got an evening at the movies that you'll be talking about with your date for some time to come. I'd also like to say that the young Williams children, who play the roles of "Emily" and "Jack" are particularly effective.

This show is slated for airing on IFC soon, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

Not a lot to be said about this one unfortunately. I saw some people recommending it on a Found Footage page I follow. It was short so I decided to give it a chance. I could never really get into it though. I think Found Footage works better with the supernatural (about the only time I'll ever say anything positive about supernatural films). There was nothing here that the Found Footage concept added to, and in reality it probably took a lot away from the film. All it probably achieved was keeping the film ultra-cheap for the filmmakers.

It's not all bad here. The final sequence was reasonably well done and added a point or two to the film. Also there were one or two sequences earlier in the film that at least had me interested in what would happen next. I would've liked to see the film get a lot darker though. Found footage films have a tendency to get really dark and leave the viewer with a hopeless feeling. I never quite felt that way here. It's far from terrible, but go in with low expectations would be my advice. 5/10.