Movie Madness: Home Sweet Home (2013)

Today was a really fun day. I went to go see 'The Boxtrolls' with Eric (and it was AMAZING, oh man). I should've known it would be, considering it's a Laika film. Afterward I went shopping for Christmas presents, and then I came home and snuggled up under a heated blanket, with a lovely candle burning in the background, and popped on a movie. Rather than letting Max pick, I let Eric have control, and here's what he picked.

'Home Sweet Home' is about a young couple that comes home and finds that a killer has trapped them inside, and it's only a matter of time before they meet a bitter demise. Unless, of course, they can escape...

While this is much better than I expected, overall it was still a bit disappointing.

First, we'll start with the disappointing stuff. (At least then we'll end this on a good note, right?)

• The bland house. This might seem like a superficial complaint, but hear me out. The colour scheme in this house is DREADFUL. Grays and whites, ew. Staring at such a drab scene for over an hour kind of grates on the eyes for a bit.
• The killer. Now, I have some good notes about the killer that I'll address in a minute. But it bothers me that we have no real understanding as to why he killed these two. It's hard for me to imagine that such an organized killer would have NO relationship with these two - whether or not he knew them beforehand, whether they're supposed to be surrogates for someone who made him angry in his life. There's just NO explanation. Maybe we're supposed to think that he's an "angel of mercy" (specifically, a malignant hero). Only, he isn't going to save them, he just gives the appearance of trying to save them.
• This is a bit slow. I know I keep criticizing films lately for being slow, and then insisting that I typically like slow movies. I know. But, these films aren't using the idea of "slowness" correctly. Rather taking time to build suspense or character development, they're all just dragging their heels so they can make these stories into feature length films, rather than letting it live as a good short film.

Okay, so, now the good things.

• The killer. It's awesome that we never get to see his face. This leaves more to the imaginations of the viewer. We're also never given a name for him (which makes it harder for us to humanize him, which ends up making him scarier). Also, that fucking mask okay.
• The husband and wife. I'll admit, there were times where they were incredibly obnoxious. Like they were supposed to fill this trope of perfect Americana or something. But, I did end up caring about them. I was worried for them.
• No animal killing. I saw that cat Critters running around, and I was terrified until the end of the film. I've been seeing a lot of horror films with animal death lately, so I was really scared and kept pestering Eric "WHERE'S THE CAT THOUGH". So, the fact that it lived through the whole film was a positive for me.

So, yeah. There were good qualities, there were bad qualities. I gave this a solid three stars on Netflix (which is an improvement, considering it thought I'd only give the film about two). There isn't really much information around about this film either - while looking it up, I couldn't find a Wikipedia page for it, and even the IMDb page seems a bit bare. So, if you feel like taking a bit of time out of your day, this is less than an hour and a half and it's available to stream on Netflix.

Let me know if you guys see this! And if you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to leave me a comment below or send me an email!

xo, Kate