Home Sick (2007)

Very well executed

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Good concept, poorly executed.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

If it's a dose of graphic old school gore you're after then Home Sick, with its regular and excessive scenes of non-CGI carnage, definitely delivers the goods: feet are sliced, heads are crushed, fingernails are torn out, teeth are smashed in, bodies are cleaved in two.It's the stuff between the splatter that takes the film down a notch or two.Writer E.L. Katz and director Adam Wingard have taken an offbeat approach with their storytelling, and the cast perform accordingly, putting in some decidedly strange performances; the result is a head-scratchingly bizarre movie at times, equal parts sadistic horror, wacky splat-stick, low-brow comedy, and avant-garde art-house weirdness, an awkward mixture that is certainly memorable, but not always that easy to digest.Bill Moseley hams it up as a creepy stranger with a suitcase full of razor blades; Tiffany Shepis rolls around manically in her dead mother's blood; Tom Towles slaps his thighs as his son and his friends play with an assortment of firearms: occasionally the silliness works, but at other times it's just too eccentric for its own good.Home Sick is worth watching simply for all the lovely red stuff—and Shepis getting her norks out (again)—but it's certainly not for everyone.

Bill Moseley portrays the Suitcase Man, who crashes a party of twenty somethings and asks each of them, who is one person they hate and would like to see dead. His suitcase is full of razor blades, btw. Pretty upset that old Suitcase stopped in and a little scared, they all give him a name, but one guy makes the mistake of naming the whole bunch at the party should die (the guy is an idiot, and was just being a dick). Soooooooo, not only do the people they named start to end up in ultra gory deaths, but the whole group is now under siege from a creepy superhuman death machine. This is a film that could have been made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, and would be a gore classic. The gore effects are pretty cheap, but effective, and the story is pretty original. After several deaths have all ready occurred, the head goofball, decides the best place for the survivors to go to fight off the killer, is with Uncle Johnny (Tom Towles) who is a chili connoisseur, and also has a house full of many many weapons. This is a seventies style slasher movie, but with a real attitude, and way over the top on just about every level. All I can say, is "Home Sick" could have been a Masters of Horror 2-part episode, and might have been the best one. Very very gross, extremely and I mean extremely gory, and a good sense of humour that gives a wink and a nod to gorehounds. Take a look at the reviews at IMDb, and they all pretty much agree with me, that this is a must-have. Although Moseley's role is pretty small, he is highly effective in his usually creepy self. But most of the kudos go to Tom Towles, in one of his best and funniest roles ever. If you don't like small independent productions operating on a shoestring, but making the most out of every nickel, you should probably stay away, because this is for the fans that consider H G Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, and would love see more of his brand of gore films. "Home Sick" is his brand of gore, and mine too.The DVD is great, and has a commentary which I expect to watch tonight. It should be a hoot.

I was extremely surprised to see how well done Home Sick was. Not only as a horror film, but in its presentation and its development as any film. Adam Wingard is a young director and you can tell a huge horror and film fan. This film will give you an idea of how great a fairly low budget film can be. I went in thinking it would be more of a thriller. I was thrilled to find out it was a true slasher gore fest. I was laughing uncontrollably. The movie was packed with great special effects and once the story develops, it is a real fun and entertaining film. The cinematography and sound effects were also really impressive. I can't wait to see what this team of filmmakers will come up with next. I really believe Home Sick is a truly entertaining and well done horror film.

I recently caught Home Sick on a whim at the Sidewalk Film Festival. I expected an average, post-90's low budget horror film. What I saw was a well-polished, deeply disjointing, gore-fest. Seemingly taking cues from horror masters Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci, Home Sick pays genuine respect to the slowly-rotting slasher genre, while adding a breath of fresh air to it as well.Set somewhere in Alabama, Claire (Lindley Evans) comes home from California to visit her mysterious past. When visiting her friends, no one seems welcoming. This tension becomes more agitated when she and her acquaintances are confronted by Bill Moseley's (!) character, a big-grinning, blue-suited stranger who happens to carry a suitcase full of razor blades. After performing a bizarre blood-letting ritual based on the kids' hatred for others, he calmly exits. Panic, murder, hysteria, sex, drugs, guns, and chili dinners ensue.The level of gross in this movie far exceeds anything that's come out in the mainstream since the days of Romero. Instances of broken bones, ripped-off flesh, disembowelment, and knives in the head plague this film. It's not just the gore that makes it special, but also the characters' involvement with death. This is best conveyed in a scene with a coked-out Candice (Tiffany Shepis) and her recently butchered mother. This scene is worth a review in itself.Besides the first class gore effects, the characters add a certain dynamic to the film. Whereas most teen / young adult horror films revolve around a cast that is pulled from stereotypical high-schoolers (The Jock, The Geek, The Face, etc.), Home Sick incorporates kids that already seem pretty crazy. For fun, they sit around drinking beer and watching gory films like Evil Dead Trap 2. They look pale and have dark circles around their eyes-even the redneck kids. They work at places like the bowling alley, the funeral home, and the school cafeteria. When it hits the fan, these characters seem like they've been preparing for it all their lives. For example, a creepy guy approaches Candice and shows her a Polaroid of a curb-jaw victim he discovered. Her response is a brilliantly sarcastic `Oooh, gross.' Due to the intense violence, there's absolutely no way this film could be showed at the local Cineplex, unless it's linked to some sort of festival. I can only hope that this comes out on video as it is a testament to real independent filmmaking.