Max is a troubled young man. With one issue after the other we see him ending up getting arrested for graffiti vandalism. We learn that his life more or less spiraled downwards after his older foster brother, Luke, committed suicide. His foster parents are trying to get him on the right track by working out a deal with the police so he can work at a community service, or more specifically a retirement home out in bumfuck nowhere. It’s either this, or get a criminal record…not much of a choice for young Max, really. He arrives at the place and starts seeing strange things already, including an old man looking out from the fourth floor window. As ominous as that might seem, we’re at a retirement home…sometimes the most exciting thing is simply watching the clouds from your window. Max immediately starts working at the place as superintendent, and is (surprise, surprise!) told not to enter the fourth floor.
As Max starts befriending some of the old people at the home, more and more strange things start happening. Some of the residents are breaking into his room at night, some of them act very strangely, and he even witnesses a resident suddenly starting to bleed, among several other weird disorders. There’s more than enough warning signs to prove to Max that something is terribly wrong with the place, and he suspects that some answers may lay on the restricted fourth floor.
The Home is a psychological horror film directed by James DeMonaco (director of The Purge), co-written with Adam Cantor.
Retirement homes are a little bit of a horror in and of itself. We’re all afraid of getting old, whether we admit it or not. There’s something terrifying about losing so much control over the functions you could earlier take for granted, maybe needing help with the most basic things like getting up from bed or even wiping your own ass. As if that’s not frightening enough, there’s also the loss of memory and awareness. There are horror movies that portrays those illnesses themselves (like Relic and to some extent Next of Kin), while there are others where the growing old thing mixes with supernatural elements, like for example The Manor. We can try to convince ourselves that growing old is “just part of life“ and nothing to worry about, but…no one in their right mind would say that life and its many challenges aren’t terrifying. And with that in mind: to which lengths would some people go if they could avoid aging? Pretty damn far, I’d reckon.
This movie does start off with playing around a little with grief and loss, although we don’t know too much about Max or Luke at the very start to feel too invested in that part. We know Max really misses his brother even a decade after the died, and that much of this resulted in him not coping too well. This isn’t all, of course, as several more layers are unveiled regarding both Max, Luke, and things from the past. When Max arrives at the retirement home, it actually looks like a fairly decent place. The elders there appear to be happy, very well dressed, and having a great time overall. More or less the equivalent of what all of us hope for the final stages of our lives to be: decent enough to function well as a human being, and without too much physical or mental deterioration. Then Max starts seeing that the rose-colored picture of the retirement home is not what it seems.
The first half of the movie goes along rather slowly and a little bit sluggish. It does build up a bit of atmosphere and keeps the tension up by offering a few twists and surprises along the way. There’s also a rather grisly death scene in the middle of the movie that comes out of nowhere, which was a pleasant surprise as at that moment the pacing really needed a shift, and managed to offer one. And while I won’t spoil any of the twisty turns along the way, I think the saving grace for the movie is a totally bonkers finale which delivers a fun, blood-soaked and gory climax.
The Home is the kind of slightly dumb fun movie that, despite some pacing issues and not the most original plot, delivers a pretty fun time.
Director: James DeMonaco
Writers: James DeMonaco, Adam Cantor
Country & year: USA, 2025
Actors: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Mugga, Adam Cantor, Bruce Altman, Denise Burse, Stuart Rudin, Ethan Phillips, Nathalie Schmidt, Mary Beth Peil, Victor Williams, Marilee Talkington
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17023012/
