My response has a few spoilers so if you've not seen this film, here's a warning before you read on.
I quite understand why some viewers did not like Home Movie, however I actually found this film quite disturbing and very intelligently rendered. Of course there will be lots of folks who hate the film because while it is a horror film, it is not scary and refuses to explain itself in broad and excessively obvious ways. It relies more on intimation that explanation. Too many horror films use jumps and starts to compensate for a poorly scripted story and fortunately nowhere in this film is there any such pandering to horror sensationalism and clichés. Instead it relies on a really solid idea - young twin sibling who are being abused off-camera by their father become increasingly sullen and withdrawn as they refuse to participate in their parents' on-camera charade of domestic bliss and pretense of happy families.
These kids fit right into the generic "evil child" mold of super-intelligent children who are always one step ahead of adults that refuse to think the worst of their darling cherubs. Yet unlike some evil child films where the kids are just evil because the kids are just evil, Jack and Emily are given a motive for their actions, which is that their upstanding Lutheran pastor father, David, has been abusing them and getting away with it. David is, of course, so hell-bent on hiding his abuse that he tells his kids that its good to have secrets as he plays happy families on camera and constantly tries to get his kids to participate in the contrivance. Meanwhile their psychiatrist mother lives in ignorance and denial of what is really going on and is more concerned about her professional career and treating other child patients than her own children. In order to get close to her own children, she needs to treat them like patients, and then congratulates herself for "curing" them. This is quite a disturbed family and its impressive how skillfully the film achieves this without being blatantly obvious about it.
The scene where the children refuse to pray before the thanksgiving meal, with their father wearing his pastor's uniform, demonstrates the anger and resentment the children feel towards him and what kind of monster of a man he really is - ignoring their protestations and cries for help and continuing like nothing is happening. He has a compulsion to record himself being a good dad to somehow leave a record of what a nice guy he is, but as the children continue to misbehave, his (self) deception unravels. The exorcism scene is truly disturbing as he would prefer to blame Satan for his children's behavior than look more closely at himself. In the car when the mother says to the kids that they shouldn't keep secrets, Dad pipes up and says, "Secrets can be good". Warning bells! The scene where the father is preparing his sermon demonstrates how contrived his outward persona is - even the words of his sermon seem contrived and hollow. Everything about this guy is pretense and deceit. It is little wonder that the children attack a child named Christian.
The escalating levels of animal torture and mutilation, as they graduate from bugs and goldfish to increasingly larger creatures, of course point to the inevitability of the children eventually attacking their parents - it comes as no surprise, yet the film plays on our knowledge of this, using it to create a sense of dread. This film is not about trying to guess the surprise ending. There are no surprises. But it's not the "what" that makes this film interesting, it's the "why". One rarely finds probing character studies in horror films, but in Home Movie we are given just that.
I quite understand why some viewers did not like Home Movie, however I actually found this film quite disturbing and very intelligently rendered. Of course there will be lots of folks who hate the film because while it is a horror film, it is not scary and refuses to explain itself in broad and excessively obvious ways. It relies more on intimation that explanation. Too many horror films use jumps and starts to compensate for a poorly scripted story and fortunately nowhere in this film is there any such pandering to horror sensationalism and clichés. Instead it relies on a really solid idea - young twin sibling who are being abused off-camera by their father become increasingly sullen and withdrawn as they refuse to participate in their parents' on-camera charade of domestic bliss and pretense of happy families.
These kids fit right into the generic "evil child" mold of super-intelligent children who are always one step ahead of adults that refuse to think the worst of their darling cherubs. Yet unlike some evil child films where the kids are just evil because the kids are just evil, Jack and Emily are given a motive for their actions, which is that their upstanding Lutheran pastor father, David, has been abusing them and getting away with it. David is, of course, so hell-bent on hiding his abuse that he tells his kids that its good to have secrets as he plays happy families on camera and constantly tries to get his kids to participate in the contrivance. Meanwhile their psychiatrist mother lives in ignorance and denial of what is really going on and is more concerned about her professional career and treating other child patients than her own children. In order to get close to her own children, she needs to treat them like patients, and then congratulates herself for "curing" them. This is quite a disturbed family and its impressive how skillfully the film achieves this without being blatantly obvious about it.
The scene where the children refuse to pray before the thanksgiving meal, with their father wearing his pastor's uniform, demonstrates the anger and resentment the children feel towards him and what kind of monster of a man he really is - ignoring their protestations and cries for help and continuing like nothing is happening. He has a compulsion to record himself being a good dad to somehow leave a record of what a nice guy he is, but as the children continue to misbehave, his (self) deception unravels. The exorcism scene is truly disturbing as he would prefer to blame Satan for his children's behavior than look more closely at himself. In the car when the mother says to the kids that they shouldn't keep secrets, Dad pipes up and says, "Secrets can be good". Warning bells! The scene where the father is preparing his sermon demonstrates how contrived his outward persona is - even the words of his sermon seem contrived and hollow. Everything about this guy is pretense and deceit. It is little wonder that the children attack a child named Christian.
The escalating levels of animal torture and mutilation, as they graduate from bugs and goldfish to increasingly larger creatures, of course point to the inevitability of the children eventually attacking their parents - it comes as no surprise, yet the film plays on our knowledge of this, using it to create a sense of dread. This film is not about trying to guess the surprise ending. There are no surprises. But it's not the "what" that makes this film interesting, it's the "why". One rarely finds probing character studies in horror films, but in Home Movie we are given just that.