Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

begob A couple of naive, enthusiastic parents gradually admit there's something creepy about their twin children, so they try to fix the problem through their opposing beliefs. Will it go the way they hope?Interesting found footage horror. All the acting is fine - the tension between the parents probably should have come earlier and more subtly - camera not too shaky, and the pace is good. We have the usual woodland isolation, camera lights peering through the dark, ordinary people going off in a huff, and the startling discovery of scary things. But it's not The Blair Witch Project.The extra strength is that it raises issues of faith and science, and the question whether one is more effective than the other, but without giving an answer. Also there's a clever switch of the point of view in the climax. The weakness is the film-makers shied away from delivering real frights, every time just fading out or not carrying through. Which is a pity. And full throated screaming is always effective in this genre, but too restrained this time.Overall, not enough scares to make it more than interesting, but I'm sure this would make a great full-production horror.

uberlefty Horror films are one of my favorite genres, unfortunately it is a rare case to find a decent one. I enjoy realistic and disturbing horror films. Not the ones that try to ride out on big breasted women running from demons that jump out on the screen every 15 minutes. This film is short, and to the point. From the very beginning there is a sense of tension that continuously builds until the brutal ending. I rarely leave a film of this type with a disturbed mind, but this movie certainly did the trick. The acting is perfect from some moderately unknown names. Adrian Pasdar was enjoyable to watch as he played a key role in the tension and the relief occasionally. The hand-held film effect may seem to be overdone, but this film utilizes it differently and even mentions at times how stupid it is to be filming their own horrors. I strongly recommend this film.

maggies-5 Filmed in the cinema verite style becoming so popular lately, "Home Movie" affords its viewers an interesting perspective. In some ways, while watching the siblings, I recalled the brothers of "Funny Games"--psychopathic game-players out only to fulfill their own sadistic desires.In a sense, that's very much what this film is about.For those versed in some psychology, it quickly becomes apparent (within the first ten minutes of the film, I might argue) that the movie's twins are displaying classic, if incredibly overplayed, symptoms of APD--antisocial personality disorder, or, if you will, sociopathy/psychopathy. (The two differ in minute ways but the difference is rather negligible when reviewing a film.) In a very telling throwaway line, the mother can be heard shouting to her husband, "They're not psychotic"--which, indeed, they aren't. Psychopathy vs. psychosis is the difference between Ted Bundy and Ed Gein--or, for the horror movie buffs, it's the difference between Hannibal and Leatherface. Psychotics cannot tell reality and are often unaware of rules--psychopaths know the rules. They simply do not care.And that is what we are presented with, here--two children who simply do not care about the established rules, who display a distinct lack of empathy, conduct disorder, manipulation, and, later in the film, the ability to flip the 'charm' switch on-and-off at a whim. I would like to point out, though, that the symptoms are over-dramatized--no child with APD tendencies is going to crucify a cat, place a frog in a vice, make a goldfish sandwich AND impale the head of the family dog. They'll probably stick to one of those things, if any.Which is why I find it better to view this movie not as a character study of two future psychopaths, but a character study of two future horror movie villains--a look at the "Funny Games" brothers when they were children, all the symptoms present but exaggerated to make for an entertaining film.And entertain it does--the acting is exceptional as the parents try desperately to hold onto a fraying thread of hope that their family may yet be saved, until a heart-wrenching scene roughly ten minutes from the film's end when we see the father finally and definitely fall to pieces. Take that, add intriguing and twisted foreshadowing throughout the first half of the film, and you have what I would consider a rather brilliant piece.I see some people complaining about the plot, and some of the holes and errors made throughout--but I would argue that this is less a film that requires a definite plot with a neat wrap-up, and more a character study of an unwinding family and the two future horror film slashers they're raising.

ShotgunHemingway Released at the beginning of the Second Found Footage Wave (my own moniker), Home Movie is just that - a found footage film. But unlike something like Cloverfield, Home Movie is a very, very small film that centers around a family in upstate New York. The family, the father (a priest - played by Adrian Pasdar or, as I know him, Caleb from Near Dark) the mother (a psychiatrist), and two kids, have moved to the rural countryside in order to ease the children's declining mental states.I don't know how much of a spoiler it is to say that this is a killer kid film, as you can probably gather that by looking at the back of the box. And, let's be honest, who doesn't love killer kid films? From the Bad Seed to Who Can Kill a Child? to The Good Son, killer kid flicks are just great. Mine is still just shy of three months old, so I don't have to worry too much about him, but I wonder if I'll still feel this way when he gets a little older...old enough to wield, say, a hammer? Anyway, so the two little freakish kids wind up being just a little bit more malevolent than the parents ever thought. That's all well and good, but my absolute favorite part of the film is the filmmaker's propensity to wrap everything up very nicely. At the end of the film (LAST WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD) when the kids finally best old' mom and pop, they put to use every bit of advice that the dad had given them in attempts to "normalize" them. Here is a list of things that I picked up on that were originally taught to the kids by the parents, and then turned around on them to be used for their demise:Trash bags for dead things. The dragon/paper mask story. The picking of the locks. The tying of the knots. The ability of the pills to induce comas. The use of a baseball bat. Overall, it's an interesting film. That's not to say it's fantastic or anything. The acting is pretty flat, at times it's not lean enough to keep you from wanting to hit fast-forward, and sometimes the camera work can get on your nerves. It's definitely not the best found-footage movie (I'd give that title to Spain's rec), but it is an entertaining, and deeply interesting piece that works, for the most part, on all the levels that it attempts to. It's definitely recommended viewing and a nice find in the onslaught of crappy horror that's produced today.