One of the most natural and cruelest experiences humans face is aging. While living a long life is a goal, our bodies begin to betray us. Our loved ones often forget us causing loneliness and isolation. Many of us find we are not as sharp as we used to be which leads to self doubt. Growing older is also one of the major themes in Mattias Johansson Skoglund’s new horror movie The Home.
There Is No Place Like Home
The Home follows Joel’s (Philip Oros) return to the small town he left behind to put his mother in a home for the elderly. Monika (Anki Lidén) has been losing a battle with dementia and needs around-the-clock care. The facility should be the answer to their problems, but Monika’s symptoms soon worsen and get even stranger. Her visions of her late and abusive husband escalate and begin causing her physical damage. Joel also begins to have these waking nightmares, forcing them each to confront their shared traumatic past.
This Feels Too Familiar
The Home simmers as it attempts to tackle many interesting themes. Aging, grief, guilt, friendship, and the fear of what awaits us on the other side of this mortal coil are at the forefront. However, because it is a predominantly white cast, it gets in the way of adding any interesting layers. This is why, despite the cast’s best efforts, the film flatlines a few times as we feel like we have seen this movie before. While we have a few semi-creepy moments, it is not enough to set it apart from recent films with older baddies. The Elderly, Relic, and The Taking of Deborah Logan all come to mind. They also kept it spicy for their entire runtimes.
While the cast did a commendable job, there are so many avenues that could have been explored if the film had not defaulted to whiteness. For instance, had Monika been a Black woman, it would have given her treatment at the home more layers. The medical field has a history of ignoring Black women, denying them pain medicine, and mistreating them. This would have given her story more layers. I also appreciate Joel is a Queer character, even though I feel like the abusive dad’s spirit constantly showing up to say something homophobic is a bit redundant. However, had he been a POC who fled this small town and had the same awful relationship with his dad, this would have been an intersectional moment. His character would have been so much more interesting.
Justice For Nina
Skoglund mentioned in the Q&A that the movie is based on Mats Strandberg’s book The Home. He also explained that much of Nina (Gizem Erdogan) and Joel’s investigation was cut during the adaptation process. I wonder if the novel has connective tissue and the answers missing from the finished product. I wanted to know more about Joel and Nina’s friendship that is being rekindled during this scary moment. Nina’s character is possibly one of the most underexplored threads of the film.
I wanted to know why Nina stayed in town and settled for the man and the life she is stuck with. This movie gives Nina the least amount of a character arc so when the spirits start attacking her it feels a bit unearned. I love the actor, but it makes it seem like the character was closer to the family than we are picking up on. Or, that she was a target because the big evil needed more to do. Either way, The Home never gives her character enough to explain why she is also haunted. Or why she does not just wash her hands of this supernatural business.
Is It Worth It?
Overall, The Home is fine. It’s not particularly scary or memorable. However, it’s a solid enough film that touches on a few cool themes and has some actors we might want to keep in the horror genre. It is also another movie in the canon where elderly people get to be the problem. While it has been time to move the needle to more intersectional representation, this is not the only movie this year that fails this open-book test. It is not even the only film at this fest that refused to get out of its way by not defaulting to a majority white cast in 2025.
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