Through camcorder footage, Home Movie follows the foibles of the Poe family from Halloween to Easter. Shortly after moving to their wooded Connecticut home, Claire (celebrated soap star Cady McClain) and David (Adrian Pasdar, House of Frankenstein 1997) notice their children (real-life siblings Austin and Emily Joy Williams) aren’t acting like their usual selves.
Like how, you ask? Like throwing rocks. Like not using their words. Like … well, as Claire records on her video diary, “Yesterday morning, the 25th of December … Christmas … Jack and Emily crucified the family cat.” Ho-ho-holy shit, kids!
That’s small stuff compared to the rest. Although Shutter Island actor Christopher Denham’s first feature as writer and director breaks no ground, especially for the found-footage subgenre, he does two things really right. The first is how differently Claire and David — respectively, a child psychologist and a pastor — approach possible solutions to their offspring’s disturbing behavior: She hopes to prescribe an answer; he spritzes holy water and shouts commands at imagined demons.
And the second is how Denham doesn’t wuss out on taking his established dark path to its logical end, making the down and dirty Home Movie mean-spirited in the best of ways. The last 15 minutes are something else, with a final shot dripping in hand-wringing eeeevilllll. It almost makes up for Pasdar’s Annoying Dad with No Off Switch routine, what with his silly voices, cartoon accents and more fart talk than the annual convention of the American College of Gastroenterology. —Rod Lott