Movies
Home Sick (V)
“HOME SICK may have had a long hard road to its DVD release but the journey is absolutely worth the wait. It’s not the best low budget horror film to ever come along but it definitely hits a home run with the special effects work—which in comparison to its budgetary brethren is severed heads above the rest.”
Every so often a film comes across my desk that has a story behind it. In the world of first-time features and microcinema those stories are generally “labor of love” type chronicles that hinge on a few key repeating elements that usually involve the copious abuse of credit cards, friends and family to propel the filmmaker’s visions forward. HOME SICK is almost one of those type of movies…but with a twist.
Shot in 2003 by recent film school graduates E.L. Katz (Writer/Producer) and Adam Wingard (Director) the film finally makes it’s way to home viewers eyes. Katz and Wingard have moved far beyond this initial feature with Katz Producing Tobe Hooper’s 2005 film MORTUARY and the pair reuniting last year to shoot the new film POP SKULL. So, with that kind of lag time the question becomes ultimately what to make of their long-shelved premiere project?
Surprisingly, despite the delays HOME SICK boasts some serious gore, an overly strange sense of the macabre and a few standout performances from an array of horror veterans. Of course, like all low budget features the film also has a few characterizations that will leave you shaking your head at their ineptitude. Additionally, the title HOME SICK doesn’t provide any huge revelation about what the film has in store for its audience. What the project is really about is a friendly reunion that goes horribly awry.
When Clair comes home, her friend—and Brad Pitt wannabe—Mark takes her over to a pal’s house for a little get together. A mysterious party crasher (Bill Mosley) arrives and forces the kids to watch him slash his forearms with razor blades all while provoking the partygoers to tell him who they hate most in the world. When Mosley departs, the friends soon discover that a Giallo-styled, black-gloved, killer is slashing his way down their self-described hit list…and thanks to one of the idiots stupid little joke, it appears that they’re all next in line!
In addition to Mosley, the film also features Horror Princess Tiffany Shepis whose character of Candice provides a good 30-minutes of bizarre behavior and requisite toplessness before being dispatched of in a decidedly gruesome manner. The other notable star of the film is Tom Towles (later of the Rob Zombie oeuvre, but at the time this film shot, probably best remembered as Otis in HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER). Towles’ character of Uncle Johnny is such a crazed backwoods redneck wacko that it’s hard to believe that Katz and Wingard weren’t basing his character on the HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES legendary Firefly clan. The rest of the cast is serviceable at best but, at worst, they are typified by Matt Lero’s performance as Tim—which consisted of a barrage line deliveries dryer than the Sahara desert. It’s almost as if Lero is purposefully acting as if he is repressing all emotion and enunciating every period in every sentence on the page. If that was the intention—and considering how much better everyone else is in the film—it well could have been. I can only ask why in the world someone would let him do that for the better part of 80-minutes. It was painful…in the bad way.
Painful in the good way would be the best way to describe the effects work by Jonathan Thornton who worked on Herschell Gordon Lewis’ sickie sequel BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT. Thornton makes sawed up feet and severed heads just stream sanguinary rivers of grue. His success is never more evident than in the torture of Shepis character—a scene that literally made me wince.
HOME SICK may have had a long hard road to its DVD release but the journey is absolutely worth the wait. It’s not the best low budget horror film to ever come along but it definitely hits a home run with the special effects work—which in comparison to its budgetary brethren is severed heads above the rest. Fans of the Rob Zombie oveure will enjoy Mosley and Towles’ minor moments in the film. And no one I know would kick Tiffany Shepis outta bed. The plot is homage to the Giallo thrillers of the 70’s but the execution is all new millennium DIY technique (although the film was shot on 16mm as opposed to digital video). We already know that Katz and Wingard have gone on to bigger and better things, so the other interesting point that HOME SICK offers is the opportunity to see what these two were doing when they first got their hands bloody in the world of features. Totally worth it in my book. Check it out for yourself!
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.