The Home (2025)

2 Stars (out of 4)

Retire Irons

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

James DeMonaco's gory, gruesome horror movie The Home isn't flat-out terrible, but it fails to develop Pete Davidson's Max character, and treads through familiar ideas and themes while offering little that's invigorating.

Troubled Max (Davidson) — grieving the loss of his older foster brother Luke — breaks into a building and paints graffiti on a wall. His foster father (Victor Williams) arranges to keep him out of jail with some community service; he must spend four months as the "super" of the Green Meadows Retirement Home. He is given simple rules to follow, including "don't go up on the fourth floor."

He meets a kindred spirit in resident Norma (Mary Beth Peil), who tells him "a heart knows a heart," but also that "there's something very wrong with this place." Max uses his lock-picking skills to investigate the fourth floor and finds alarming things going on there. That, coupled with strange happenings on the floors below, inspire him to launch a full-on investigation, and, possibly, help some people for the first time.

When we meet Max in The Home, he's pretty much a juvenile delinquent, albeit a talented one (his pessimistic graffiti art is impressive). Once he gets to Green Meadows, he seems instantly won over by a "welcome" party in his honor. It's an abrupt change, and even though Davidson seems intent on creating an empathetic character, Max's transformation feels a bit off.

Then, director and co-writer DeMonaco — who, unfortunately, is the creator of the Purge series — tries his best to dole out and/or keep the story's sinister secrets, but the effort seems mechanical, routine, and it only recalls movies that handled these themes a hundred times better, from The Wicker Man to Get Out, and not to mention The Rule of Jenny Pen, a much pricklier, more playful movie also set in a menacing retirement home.

Repeating gory nightmare sequences, an excess of gross "eye stuff," and a climax of bloody mayhem don't quite provide the intended jolt that they aspired to, and The Home leaves off like the lights are on but no one's there.