It’s not often you find a film that’s so artless, it feels like one big joke. But “The Home,” James DeMonaco’s silly octogenarian horror flick, is about as hopeless as you can get. It stars a miscast Pete Davidson as Max, a ne’er-do-well loner who is forced into completing community service at an elderly home rather than serving a prison sentence. As you’d expect, this care facility is far more sinister than its quaint surroundings suggest. The old folks there are energetic and spry, but their building houses pained screams and even more sinister secrets.
To be clear, I’ve made “The Home” sound far cooler than it deserves. This is a brain-dead horror film whose potential for fun campy excess is undercut by its own self-satisfied twist and its illogical turns.
Herky-jerky editing and pacing are unfortunate signatures of DeMonaco’s “The Home,” particularly in the film’s opening sequence. The parallel cutting depicts a young Max (Jagger Nelson) celebrating his foster brother Luke’s (Matthew Miniero) acceptance to college. Max’s brother didn’t fare well in college. He died by suicide. In the present day, an adult Max (Davidson) awakens. He is gaunt, his body covered in tattoos with phrases like “Thicker than blood.” At night he leaves his crummy apartment, and with red paint makes a mural depicting the earth grasped by sinuous fingers. The image reads “our future is burning.” The cloying smashing together of these narratives are meant to elicit sympathy, but the results are cartoonishly maudlin.
While the mawkish tone is partly the result of DeMonaco and Adam Cantor’s clunky script, Davidson’s actorly limits are equally glaring. With a perpetual cracked smile, he always appears to be halfway toward laughing at a joke that doesn’t exist. When Max’s stepfather pleads with Max in prison to turn his life around, the scene’s intended rebellious angst falls flat because Davidson struggles to land an emotion that isn’t snark.
Childish jumpscares further weaken the horror. When Max arrives at the Green Meadows retirement home he immediately encounters a surprise in a janitor’s closet that the viewer, due to the film’s obnoxious sound work, sees and hears from three scenes away. Additionally, Max, defying order to never enter the fourth floor, does eventually venture there when he hears screeching screams. On that level he discovers a room with gurgling and drooling elderly people surrounded by televisions playing a documentary about oil drilling. There’s a modicum of eeriness here that could’ve been indelibly haunting. But DeMonaco, who became famous because of the unsubtle nature of his “Purge” franchise, opts for an overwrought jumpscare that’s far more comical than frightening.
These agitated bids for scares dot a narrative burdened by far too many moving pieces. Norma (Mary Beth Piel), an elderly resident who befriends Max, due to both experiencing great loss, seems to know more than she’ll admit. While the elderly enjoy pool and dance parties, residents like the laidback Lou (John Glover) are prone to quite literally falling apart. A spam website featuring a woman with a melted face warns Max against danger as an oncoming hurricane bears down on the home too. And then of course there’s the question of what really happened to Luke, a tragedy that afflicts Max with menacing PTSD nightmares. DeMonaco wears his influences like “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut” on his sleeves by trading in Kurbrick’s stark lighting for vibrant hues of blueberry and cherry red. But he lacks the ability to subconsciously translate his film’s themes directly to the viewer. Instead he blungeons them onto your head without any regard for taste.
On top of its octogenarian aspects, somehow “The Home” is an eco-horror film too. Without spoiling too much, there is a tension between Max and the elderly who inhabit Green Meadows. Max feels adrift and abandoned, so he lashes out at authority. The elderly live the ideal retirement, the kind that seems impossible for people of Max’s age to imagine. How does one live in a world whose best resources have already been drained? It’s a question the film poses but whose answer passes up poignancy for juvenile violence.
Just as “The Home” is becoming interesting, mixing big topics with outlandish moments of horror, it loses its storytelling nerve. The film relies on an inarticulate twist, explaining the oddball series of events with a summation that’s more stupid than the bizarre events preceded it. A final freakout, featuring a series of emasculating blows, offers a kind of cathartic release. But the violence feels empty. Incoherent and cheap, “The Home” might be the worst movie of the year.
