I must say that, aside from 4bia, this was the only genuinely scary movie of the festival. Everything had a twist or a humor angle, but this one took itself seriously enough to be creepy and had the smarts to be able to sustain it.
Home Movie is what it sounds like: a ‘found footage’ movie made by a family. The twist here is that once the Poe (har har) family moves to a farmhouse in a very small town it’s entirely possible that their children, Emily and Jack, have become possessed. Mr. Poe (Adrian Pasdar) is a minister and Mrs. Poe (Cady McClain) a child psychologist. The camera was purchased so that Mrs. Poe could do video diaries about her patients, but Mr. Poe is obsessed with keeping a record of their lives together, ostensibly, to spend more ‘family time’ together. When things begin to go from mildly creepy to clearly deranged with Emily and Jack, the family begins to fall apart.
Todd Brown from Twitch introduced the movie by saying that people keep doing shaky-cam found footage movies because when they work, they really work, and this movie really works. I have to agree. My only issue is that it feels like a ‘first feature’, a term you may not be familiar with, but a feeling you’d know anywhere. Watching a lot of independent film I get to see a lot of ‘first features’, which is to say that this is the director’s first feature (obvious, non?) and it has a number of symptoms which give you the ‘feeling’. They tend to be things like incomplete logic in the script, camera movement for movement’s sake, continuity errors, etc. Rarely are the hallmarks of a first feature bad scripting, low budget actors, low budget sets, bad lighting or hokey premises. All of those things can plague a seasoned director’s 33rd film, just as much as their first. And this was not a first, but felt that way. There were continuity issues and action that took me out of the plot enough to say, ‘Huh?’ and as a result my enjoyment of the movie suffered. To his credit, producer Andrew van den Houten fielded these questions during the Q&A very well, but actually CALLED the director after the screening to take him up on a continuity issue. I do have to respect that.
Please note that none of this took me SO out of the movie that I didn’t enjoy it, in fact, I would say that this was one of my favorites of the festival (and considering this year was so good, this was quite a feat). The cast is stellar. Adrian Pasdar (you likely know him as Nathan Patrelli from Heroes) and Cady McClain (All My Children, As the World Turns) were excellent as accidental parents who have made the best of it so far, trying desperately to fix their broken family, even when they don’t know how. The kids, though are where the money’s really at. Mr. van den Houten indicated that working with kids can be tricky, especially when working with such a dark script. He indicated that it’s important to be responsible in choosing children who are smart enough to understand what is going on – especially that it’s not real. Having worked with Austin Williams previously on The Girl Next Door, Andrew felt that Austin was the one to play Jack. Since Austin conveniently had a twin sister, Amber Joy was cast as his sister. The two of them are perfectly suited to play a couple of creepy kids who may be possessed or might be just plain evil.
I’m not sure if this movie is getting a theatrical release right now, but I strongly recommend a viewing on DVD, especially at home (preferably alone). The creepy mood of this piece and the premise will scare you senseless. I hope to see more from this group soon.
