Home (IV) (2016) User Reviews

Home: A swing and a miss

[Platypuschow · 3/10 · 28 September 2018]

Yesterday a Christian followed me to my Facebook page to let me know that I'd upset him by being critical of the church in one of my reviews. If you're reading this, best stop now.

Home is a horror starring Heather "Nightmare on Elm Street" Lagenkamp and mid 90's pop star Samantha Mumba. If you choose to watch the movie for them however then don't as they are not the stars here and are not present for the majority of the film. If you choose to watch the film because of the undead girl on the cover then again don't bother, that is on screen for literally about 1 second of the 90 minute duration.

It tells the story of a married lesbian couple and their daughters who move into a new reportedly haunted house. When they go away leaving the older daughter to babysit the younger things go terribly wrong.

Truth is the film got my interest early on, I like Lagenkamp and the movie was setting up be something interesting. Alas the film has a strong opening, a boring middle and a baffling weak finale.

The featured review at time of writing this refers to the film as propaganda. This term gets thrown around a lot on IMDB, generally when a movie involves themes the person doesn't like. Here the person claims that it is anti-gay and anti-secular and I can confidently say it really really isn't. How the person reached this conclusion I cannot get my head around, clearly he looked for something that just wasn't there.

Home could have been great but weak writing, lack of originality, a boring middle and terrible cgi at the end damaged it beyond repair.

The Good:

Heather Lagenkamp

The Bad:

Bad cgi

Dishonest cover

Head scratching finale

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

No sex before marriage doesn't apply if you're horny

It's 2018 and filmmakers still don't think the cross falling off the wall thing is a tad old

When frisky guys often play with dolls

WHY DON'T YOU LIKE ME?

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 6 May 2019]

Carrie (Kerry Knuppe) was raised Catholic and carries that with her even to her mother's (Heather Langenkamp) new house, a house she shares with her partner Samantha (Samantha Mumba) and daughter Tia (Alessandra Shelby Farmer). To Carrie's dismay, Samantha and Tia are atheists and her mother honors their wishes by not praying at the table. There is an instant rift between Carrie and the world she lives in. Oh yes the house they live in is haunted by an old man (Oto Brezina) who collected Victorian pictures of dead people and the proverbial creepy wooden puppets.

The film is rather bland up until the last 20 minutes or so. The twist, while not totally unexpected, was not the ending I would have done. We are then shown a mess-o-flashbacks so we can see all the clues we missed and the cleverness of Frank Lin.

No swearing sex or nudity.

Note to self: Do not use on-line exorcisms.

A warning about the sound.

[Mikey9999 · 5/10 · 9 November 2020]

This movie is ruined by the sound, most of the movie plays at 20% of the maximum volume just so the volume can be 5 times louder at a few points that are meant to make you jump. If a movie makes me jump it should be because it's scary, not because I'm worried the sound is going to damage my speakers.

The movie missed the clever bus

[hwinstead · 24 March 2016]

This movie plays out like a Lifetime Original movie. There may be spoilers ahead, so read at your own risk.

I found the character of Carrie to be particularly difficult to like, and her particular brand of fundamentalism doesn't even come across as fundamentalist. This could have been a fantastic story of a girl coming to grips with her new family and shaking the oppression that comes from being raised in a Christian fundamentalist environment. What I see of Carrie is her getting mildly uncomfortable when people don't pray, a desire to go to morning mass, and a tendency to say the Hail Mary prayer like it has an expiration date.

They don't spend time building out the relationships between any of the characters. The youngest daughter just comes across as your standard creepy movie kid, Samantha is stand-offish, and Heather is weirdly disinterested and awkward. It's hard to believe that either of the adult women know how to be parents, much less a same-sex couple who has to fight twice as hard to be seen as legitimately acceptable.

Instead of getting great social commentary and tense moments, I got half-hearted jump scares and sloppy characterization. If you have low production values, don't rely on devices that showcase how much of a budget you don't have. The ending? Predictable and underwhelming. This could have been so fantastic, but a nice concept doesn't make for a good movie. It would have been a better miniseries. It's worth a watch, but I wouldn't pay more than a dollar to see it.

Ultimately a very bland and generic haunting movie...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 12 November 2020]

Well, there is no doubt about the fact that I sat down to watch the 2016 movie "Home" because it was a horror movie, and also because it had Heather Langenkamp on the cast list.

And now that I have just finished watching writers Jeff Lam and Frank Lin's movie, I must admit that this was not really an outstanding horror experience. Sure, the movie was watchable, but it just wasn't a particularly great horror movie. It was essentially way too generic in its storyline, and there wasn't really much of anything spooky happening. Sure, there were some events going on, but it was not sufficiently enough.

And the ending of the movie was just so bland that I bet even a guy in a coma would sit up and say "are you serious?" Yeah, that was just very, very predictable ending, and one that didn't really do justice to the movie.

Director Frank Lin was just playing it way too safe in the way that the movie's story was executed and brought to life on the screen; it was as if he had a 'How to Make a Horror Movie' manual, and was following it chronologically step by step. And that made for a very generic and predictable movie.

The acting in the movie was actually adequate, taking into consideration the severe limitations imposed by a flaccid storyline.

Visually then "Home" leaves much to be wanting for, because the movie is not heavy on the usage of special effects. Whatever little effects were there served their purposes well enough, but this wasn't effects that were bedazzling or will blow you away.

"Home" doesn't bring anything new to the haunted house genre, and that is a factor that definitely keeps the movie from getting up and out of the generic runt that it was trotting around in.

All in all, "Home" is watchable a single time, because it was just too bland and generic. And truth be told, the storyline is so weak that it collapses under its own weight and cannot support more than a single viewing.

My rating of the 2016 movie "Home" lands on a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. If you enjoy a properly scary horror movie, then there are far better and far more scary movies readily available on the horror market.

Nifty little horror

[gerbildad · 7/10 · 12 August 2018]

It's no Insidious or The Conjuring, but this movie delivers! It starts off slow, and at first it's not clear where the movie is heading. Is it a ghost story? A possession story? Is there social commentary, and if so, is it something I'd like or not like? After the first half hour or so, amidst an atmosphere of gathering dread, things get rolling and the characters seem to be moving forward in adjusting to a difficult situation not of their choosing. Then, the story takes an abrupt turn this reviewer never saw coming!

The acting is generally good, as you might expect with veteran scream queen Heather Langenkamp on board. The lead, Kerry Knuppe, is a joy to watch. (Aaron the boyfriend, however, is somewhat underwhelming.)

Not showing Christianity in a bad light may not be everyone's cup of tea--which might explain why this movie currently has such a bad rating. If this is a requirement, don't bother. If it's not a problem, though, Home is definitely worth a look.

Really wasn't expecting anything. *Spoiler Alert*

[lupchonglips · 10/10 · 5 March 2016]

So right off the bat, I was expecting a crazy horror movie from the cover & starring Heather Langenkamp (Nightmare on Elm Street) one of my favorite actress from the horror genre. I was totally wrong. The movie was a slow burn.

I hate slow movies! Hate hate hate them! But for some weird reason, I was OK with this one. The characters were interesting & all a little weird in their own way. It totally ramps up after the first 30 mins. Aaron, who's my favorite character in the movie is so funny and his facial reactions had me rolling. That Barbie scene was so hilarious!

And there's a great 6th Sense twist at the end. Totally had me thinking "WTF?!" And then "Ahhhh... No Feakin way!"

Not the movie I expected to watch at the beginning but totally worth it at the end.

Worth a watch!!

[nik-498-56571 · 6/10 · 7 August 2021]

I don't get the really low average score... it's a reasonable horror. A couple of jumpy bits, nothing particularly original, but an ok movie to watch on your subscription service. The teacher should stick to teaching and not acting as he's rather wooden.

Worth a punt if there's nothing else to watch!

Don't Be Fooled By Propaganda!

[Zebb67 · 19 March 2016]

This is one of the director's trademark, fundamentalist propaganda films pretending to be a horror film (though there isn't much in the way of horror, unless you count the horror of losing your money on this junk and realizing you've been duped). Filled with anti-gay and anti-secular propaganda -- anti-anything the director disagrees with, in other words. If a fundamentalist filmmaker is going to preach at you, they should at least have the honesty to tell you that first. This reminds me of that film The Life Zone, which was sold as a horror film but turned out to be an anti-abortion statement where the one woman who has an abortion ends up being tortured in hell. Fortunately, Stephen Colbert caught wind of that fraud and was able to warn audiences in time. Hopefully, I've warned a few people.

Kinda weird-but I like that

[dgonzalez-40797 · 7/10 · 28 January 2021]

I wasn't sure where we were going with this movie- but I honestly didn't mind. My big con to the movie is that I thought heather and Samantha would have a stronger presence in the movie. I understand they wanted to share the screen with an Original Scream Queen, and someone possibly up and coming, but I didn't even really like Carrie's character all that much to care about her. But just getting a chance to see Samantha Mumba and Heather L on screen was enough for me

Excellent. Great twist at end.

[shelleyk-87798 · 9/10 · 15 September 2020]

The East German Stasi guy on here screaming "Propaganda!" would also find The Exorcist offensive because of its reference to religion. Calm down buddy. This is a good movie. I think people are reading too much into it, but it scared the heck out of me. I like movies that don't overdo it with the scare tactics; they generally come off as cliche, and I can usually tell what's going to happen before it does. I liked the straightforwardness of this one, and the twist at the end took me completely by surprise. It was very unexpected. Worth watching!

A Hidden Haunted House Gem

[lyraukn · 9/10 · 1 June 2023]

I watched this movie because I saw that Heather Langenkamp was in this, and I love her stuff. While she is in this, it isn't a starring role and I felt like it was a bit of a missed opportunity. I had heard somewhere that much of this script was improv which really blew me away. That said, I quite liked this film. Samantha Mumba and Heather have amazing chemistry, there's bits of humor thrown in here and there in their dynamic, I loved that. The ending was a twist that I didn't see coming and while the story wasn't entirely original, it was a good watch. I would have loved to see what they could have done with a bigger budget. If you're looking for a film that will scare you, this probably isn't it, though it is quite thrilling. If you're looking for a film to just sit with and enjoy for scary movie night, check this out. I disagree with the statement that this film is anti-gay, as a lesbian myself I always appreciate a good lesbian love story in the mix that isn't full of misogyny and objectification. Overall, I recommend.