THE HOME

US, 2025, 95 minutes, Colour.

Pete Davidson, John Glover, Ethan Phillips, Bruce Altman.

Directed by James DeMonaco.

In 2023, John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush, starring in a New Zealand film, The Rule of Jenny Pen, showed how there was potential for a horror film set in an aged care home. Here is another aged care horror film.

Writer-directors, James DeMonaco, created a very successful franchise, The Purge, for both film and television. There was a kind of mad lawlessness about the series, society creating a time when killing laws were suspended and murderous characters went on violent sprees. This time, with Home, there are again murderous characters on violent sprees, but very much confined to the remote Aged Care home.

The film opens with a boy in foster care, Max, loving foster parents, sadly overwhelmed with the disappearance of his older brother. The older Max is a loner, troublemaker, rather stylish painter of graffiti on a large scale. In court, he is sentenced to community service at the Home. Some audiences may be put off because Max is played by comedian, Pete Davidson, who is something of an acquired taste. He definitely brings a mixture of offputting and sympathy as well as menace to his performance.

There is someone sinister-looking from an upstairs window when he arrives, but he is given caretaking tasks, the authorities seem friendly enough, so do some of the older residents.

But, and there is always a but… Upstairs on the fourth floor are some very decrepit in health old people, just surviving. Max was not supposed to go in there, and another but…

Meanwhile, despite our suspicions and his, there is a genial resident doctors, one of the residents takes a strong shine to Max, friendly, and there is an eccentric joker, performer, played by John Glover.

So, where is this going? Going downhill for Max and his morale, his physical safety, his becoming the victim of a belief in a gleefully malicious conspiracy. So, off the audience goes on an emotional horror rampage, Max the victim, revelations about the aged care residents, their close-knit community, their worship of a kind of earth deity and its ritual and savage consequences. A lot of violent comeuppances as we expect. And, depending on the box office response (American critics very negative), there are openings left, of course, for a sequel.

1. The quiet title, but raising expectations? The visuals of the home, the buildings, the grounds, the rooms, the corridors, the sinister fourth floor? The musical score?
2. The work of the director, The Purge franchise, film and television? Expert in horror? Yet in basically credible locations and situations?
3. The introduction to Max, drawing, bond with Luke, the foster parents? Luke going off to college, Max and his loneliness?
4. Max, adult, appearance, clothes, the extensive graffiti? The police? The foster parents? Avoiding prison, community service, going to the home, superintendent? Memories of Luke and his death? The effect on him, nervy? Settled?
5. Welcome to the home, the authorities, Max and his duties, the demands, emptying rubbish, the woman bleeding in the pool, his room, disturbed sleep in nightmares?
6. The staff at the home, especially the welcome from Dr Serbian, genial, the encounter with Norma, her friendship, conversations? The other authorities? The residents, Lou, genial, Acting? The others, their age? Max and his seeing the mask woman and the sexual encounter, then in his dreams?
7. The face at the window, when he arrived, the fourth floor, his breaking the law, the elderly in their wheelchairs, television and the commentary about oil, desperate? The attack? The rescue, his being reprimanded?
8. Lou, jovial, explanations, theatre? The joke for him to clean the excrement – and the welcome for the party?
9. Thelma, erratic, her death, impaled? The reaction of the doctors?
10. Max, upset, his leaving, going to his foster parents, their being nice, the quote about the heart and the link to Thelma? The two girls fostered, leading him to the attic, the room, the discovery of the photo albums, the past, the same photo of groups, Luke is a victim? His taking the photo, emotion?
11. Max, his return to the home, the realisation that it was Luke upstairs, that he was not attacking, but embracing, the call for help? Max, the drugs? His being held prisoner?
12. The explanation, the cups, the statue, Dea and the nature worship? The science, draining the spirit of the victims, the close-ups of action of the eyes? Making the residents of the home ageless, the reality of their long ages, the transformations? Hedonism, sexuality, performance? Lou and his leadership? Dr Serbiann?
13. Max on the fourth floor, with Luke, his sharing and draining the life energy, preparing for the confrontation with all of the home?
14. Vengeance unleashed, the horror film visuals, close-up of violence and mayhem? The destroying of all the residents?
15. The bond between Max and Lucas?
16. An allegory of privilege society preying on those less well off, community parasites, revolt against them, anger and destruction?