Summer Horror films in 2025 have been hit or miss. A few such as Together, 28 Weeks Later and Bring Her Back have been very well received by critics and the public. I Saw What You Did Last Summer not so much. “The Home” falls in with the latter even though it threw everything except the kitchen sink at the wall to see what would stick. Not much did. I do give them credit, though, for going to the old college try. This movie didn’t know what direction it was going in. Psychological horror or bloody good time horror? Neither worked for me, which isn’t a good thing.

Max (Pete Davidson) is the stepson of a couple who adopt children. Earlier in his life, he lost his older brother Luke to a tragedy. He’s had a hard time recovering from that because they were very close. He’s gotten in trouble with the law a few times. He ends up getting a new job at the Green Meadows retirement home as a janitor for senior citizens. This is his last chance. He seems to be doing well and getting along with the folks at “The Home.” Until he starts to do some strange things going on at the old folks’ home. That with some bad dreams, insomnia, and not being allowed to go on the fourth floor all add up to a conspiracy he tries to uncover.

Pete Davidson is known for his run on Saturday Night Live, SNL for short. He is considered a straight man comedian. After his stint on SNL, he got into streaming shows and films. Bodies Bodies Bodies and The King of Staten Island are considered a couple of his successes.  He’s done a bit of everything in his young career so far. With The Home, he delves back into the horror genre.  With his previous horror film, he worked alongside some good young actors.This time around, he’s working with some older actors who are probably past their prime. I liked him in the previous horror film he did Bodies Bodies Bodies. It was funnier than this film is. That’s Davidson’s wheelhouse. He needs to be able to be funny in his movies to be successful. This one didn’t allow him to do so.

The aforementioned there is a big cast of actors in this film. Most of them like John Glover, Bruce Altman, Ethan Phillips, and others are more obscure character actors. The big cast sometimes takes away from Davidson or rather distracts from him, but because of them, there is a bigger mystery in the end. I liked Glover and some of the others within the context of the story, but Davidson did a good job keeping the focus on himself. He was pretty serious in this story, which is very different from other projects he’s been a part of. His third act turn was a pleasant surprise. I was glad to see the story take this graphic approach and conclusion. He seemed to enjoy all of the mayhem that was going during the end sequence. 

Speaking of the end of the film, there are also a lot of other parts like dream sequences and so forth. The makeup and hairstyling in this movie was off the charts. It was that good. During some scenes, people were ripping their faces off, and others showed people in old man makeup. Limbs were being severed, and others were being impaled. The makeup and hairstyling department deserves a round of applause because they did a great job. They had me going for a while for some of these scenes. This department and skillet have gotten better and better as the years have gone by. These aspects kept me engaged in the story throughout even when I didn’t watch to be. 

The Home was a horror film that had a lot of interesting themes and ideas, but they didn’t all come together in the end. There was a pretty big cast that took away from the star Davidson. The story was a bit confusing at times. The makeup and hairstyling were pretty impressive, and the third act saved what could have been a complete disaster.  This movie followed a lot of horror movie tropes with the dream sequences and a man confused about what’s going on, resulting in some kind of conspiracy theory. The director made the most out of this story he could, but nobody could have saved this film, not even Davidson. I’ve seen too many of these types of stories before. It wasn’t very interesting to me this time either. 

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen