The world of Home Bodies, director Casey Walker’s dystopian sci-fi film, is all about order. The movie opens with a slow omniscient tracking shot through a semi-claustrophobic bunker-like space, which will be revealed to be the film’s sole setting, complete with motion-activated lights, retro-futuristic appliances that look dingy and obsolete but have amazing Star Trek-like powers.
Populating this environment are two babies – one swaddled in red; the other in blue – who grow up, in an immediate time jump, to become pre-teens: Red (Emma Ho) and Blue (Ian Ho). What is going on, including how these children survive, is part of the film’s central mystery.
The kids have familiar language, albeit with a few tweaks: catch becomes “ball catch”, milk becomes “milky”, and hide and go seek becomes “hide and look”, etc. They have familiar activities, such as coloring and watching VHS tapes of a puppet show called “The Barn”. Most intriguingly, they have a parental figure in Papa, voiced by the director, who is visually represented by a rectangle with a lit circle in the middle and kept secluded in a room with an intercom that Red and Blue must buzz to get into.
For the most part, however, Red and Blue’s lives are dictated by routine and the rules that Papa ominously dictates. They parent themselves, with Blue preparing three meals a day that transform in the microwave, a bun becomes a loaded hot dog, for example. They put themselves to sleep in their color-coordinated beds when it’s time for lights out. The food replenishes whenever they run low on supplies, and waste is left at the bottom of the cellar stairs, vanishing in the blink of an eye when the word “garbage” is repeated three times.
It’s a perfect, uncomplicated dystopian life that screams “social experiment.”
Their sterile, repetitious life is complicated when, on the 42nd Noel, ie: Christmas, Blue and Red are confronted by another living being lurking behind the tree. This is Pal (played by The Boys and Motherland: Fort Salem non-binary actor Ess Hödlmoser), so named by Papa because Red and Blue are in need of one, but also because they’re at the age when they can – and must – take care of something.
The introduction of Pal immediately upends the social order within the environment. Blue, the more rule-abiding and domineering of the two, is uncomfortable with Pal’s non-verbal status and tendency to lurk (Hödlmoser never speaks, but they do plenty of acting with their eyes and stiff body language). Red, meanwhile, is more open-minded: she not only has empathy for Pal, but quickly strikes up a friendship that Blue naturally finds threatening.
One of Papa’s unbreakable rules is that the children must not hurt each other. To do so is to invite punishment, which is established when they break a window playing ball catch, and Papa reminds Blue about a large scar he bears on the back of his hand from a previous infraction. So while the children have been forced to parent themselves, they still live at the mercy of the voice that controls every aspect of their environment – from the heating to the food and water supply.
If there is a weakness to Home Bodies, it is that screenwriters Adrian Murray and Marcus Sullivan establish the world of the film and its corresponding rules in such a way that it is relatively easy to anticipate where the narrative will go. In many ways, the film feels like a parable: a dystopian recreation of the Garden of Eden (with a brother/sister pair filling in for Adam and Eve) or a tweaked version of Cain and Abel. The fact that Pal’s introduction is swiftly followed by violence, distrust, and anarchy is wholly anticipated, though that doesn’t necessarily detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. It feels akin to an episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.
As the situation becomes increasingly dire, the fact that we are observing children who are being controlled and lied to also becomes harder to ignore. While the film’s half-hearted final reveal about what is happening (kind of?) doesn’t fully satisfy, it is tantalizing and brazen in a speculative sci-fi kind of way.
There are two main reasons to watch the film: the acting from the Ho siblings and the visual aesthetic. The former confirms that the brother/sister pair are ones to watch because the film lives and dies on the relationship between Red and Blue. They’re distinct, fully fleshed-out characters in their own right and the escalating tension between them, particularly following Pal’s arrival, feels extremely authentic and believable.
As for the film’s distinctive look, production designer Chareese Steinhoff and art director David-William Martel have crafted something unique. The aesthetic feels like a bunker combined with an ’80s home, complete with wood paneling, flat matte walls and a distinct blue/red colour scheme in the bedroom, mirroring Red and Blue’s costumes. Interspersed among this somewhat familiar environment, however, are thin vertical light panels, triangular throw pillows, and geometric patterns in the windowpanes. It’s striking and tactile, with a lived-in feel that contrasts with the usual antiseptic or futuristic look these films tend to employ.
In contrast to the twins, Pal has a shaved head and wears a cream/nude colored latex suit. This obviously distinguishes them from the other two, but also distinctly avoids the traditional gender binary embodied by Red and Blue. Intriguingly, in the script, Red identifies Pal as female, while Blue switches back and forth between she/her pronouns and it – which tracks due to his dislike of the interloper, but also plays into the casting of a non-binary actor in the role.
Walker’s direction toes the line between claustrophobic and innovative. He ensures the space feels restrictive in order to emphasize Red and Blue’s experiences, but finds plenty of ways to keep the film visually interesting for the audience. This includes plenty of angled shots, including some choice Dutch angles when things go to shit, as well as a 360-degree pan around the breakfast table, and a dimly lit hallway sequence that emphasizes both the literal and emotional distance between the siblings.
Then there’s the sequence in the cellar. Beginning with an extreme wide shot and plenty of echoes to emphasize how big and threatening the space is, we follow Red as she is swallowed up in piles of squelchy, maggoty garbage. It’s completely nightmarish and the closest the film comes to full-blown horror (interestingly, Natalie Erika James’ latest, Saccharine, has a nearly identical sequence; there must be something in the garbage).
Overall, despite some telegraphed narrative developments and an ending that teases rather than satisfies, Home Bodies is fascinating. Featuring two fantastic child performances and a unique production design, Home Bodies is a distinct and compelling dystopian parable.
Home Bodies had its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.
