Home Made
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
This weekend, I was supposed to review the new theatrical release P2 for this site. It got a good review from Roger Ebert, of all people, so I could at least have expected something competent or maybe semi-involving. I’d have watched it, written my review, sent it to my editor and I’d have gone on with my life.
I can’t do that now.
I can’t do it because I have seen Home Made; which is, free from hyperbole and rancor, the worst film I have ever seen in my entire life. I don’t say that often. In fact, I haven’t said it since I saw Tomcats back in 2001, which is the film that Home Made deposed from its throne. I can’t go see P2 because any movie I watch after this one will seem to me a masterpiece. Now I have to dig through my DVD collection and watch some of the best movies I have to get my standards high again. It takes a village to raise a child, apparently. It also takes eighty-two minutes to ruin your whole Goddamn weekend. I learned that the hard way.
Home Made is a movie for people who think to themselves “My life is going TOO well. I should do something about that.”
That this movie cost couch-cushion change is of no interest or concern to me. I’ve gotten complaints asking how I could lay into cheap movies the way I do. “They’re trying their best!”
Their best is not good enough. There are wonderful straight-to-video horror DVDs released all the time. They can give you what you want, while making you feel like you’re in on a secret. Movies that open in every mall in America are good and all, but seeing a good movie that went straight to video is like discovering buried treasure. And all the while, it’s at a fraction of the cost, letting you believe that creativity is alive and well. Sometimes a movie goes straight to the shelves because they don’t have any big name stars or a saleable premise that can be summed up in a thirty second commercial spot.
Some of them, like Home Made, go there because they’re boring, pointless and terrible.This isn’t because they’re cheap, mind you. Last time I checked, talent didn’t cost anything.
You know, in all this meandering, I forgot to tell you what this movie’s about. Home Made is the “story” of a maniac who tapes himself killing people. That’s it. I can’t tell you about any of the other characters because, with limited exceptions, the only purpose they serve is to die five minutes after meeting them. In fact, I don’t think any of them have names…
This is the part where I tell you about the acting. And I would, but dammit, I couldn’t find any!
The perpetrator of Home Made (because “director” is too generous a term) is a young British fellow named Jason Impey. He’s also the lead actor, did some of the cinematography, composed the score, helped edit, produce…Basically he pulled a Robert Rodriguez. The funny thing about this is that he’s credited as the writer, though be damned if I could find any instance during this feature where pen was put to paper and a logical thought process was applied. I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I was teaching a screen writing class and I told you to write an opening scene where…
-A young woman wakes up.
-She receives a phone call from her boyfriend.
-She takes a shower.
-He shows up at the door.
Now any of you worth your salt could cut this down to two pages. Three, if you wanted to add narration. Not our man Impey. He stretches this out to ten minutes, accompanied by a loud and excruciating score and buffeted by pointless shots of the boyfriend walking…and walking…and WALKING to the girlfriend’s house. I kid you not when I say that when the boyfriend has a dream later in the film…You guessed it! IT’S HIM WALKING!
And this repeats itself over and over again. Guy sees someone and he tapes himself killing them. All the while, that crummy techno score keeps looping and getting louder. It only stops when the maniac (played by Impey, I must mention again) is apprehended and he screams in the police station that “I AM THE GREATEST FUCKING HORROR FILMMAKER WHO EVER WAS!”
By God. Don’t you have to make a couple more movies before you attempt the “Shyamalan Self-Fellatio” thing?
And we have to sit and watch for a good five minutes while Impey rambles and screams and hoots about how he’s a genius and is bringing horror back to the people. And just when I thought I wanted a vacation from the techno and the endless shots of walking, I wanted them back more than I’ve wanted most things in my whole life.
From the looks of it, this looks like a bunch of kids screwing around in their backyards making a horror movie with ketchup and dull knives. And if it stayed on that level, I’d have been cool with this. That’s how directors get started out. But the thing is, you make another one and another one and another one to get your craft down cold. Then and only then shall you be ready for the big show.
But it didn’t stay on that level. This was given to me by my editor and it was given to her by a DVD company. Someone is hoping to make money off of this garbage. Look, I don’t care what YOU do with YOUR friends and YOUR camera in YOUR neighborhood. But if you’re asking adults with real jobs to fork over their hard-earned money to pay for the privilege of watching it, then you have to be held accountable for your actions.
This includes coming across guys like me. They’re called critics. And they’re going to tell you that your movie sucks and you should stop making them.
And they’re also going to tell you that “Directors of Photography” doesn’t have an apostrophe in it.
Home Made will be released by Brain Damage Films in early 2008.
Popularity: 14% [?]
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