The Home – Film Review

James DeMonaco‘s latest directorial effort, The Home, is a psychological horror film that squanders its premise, buried under genre tropes, tonal confusion, and a miscast lead. Despite a genuinely unsettling setting and some eerie narrative possibilities, this slow-burn thriller ultimately fizzles into a dull slog that can’t decide what it wants to be—social commentary, character study, or ghost story.

Starring Pete Davidson in a rare dramatic turn, The Home follows Max, a troubled and reclusive man with a murky past who takes a job at a retirement facility. The home, a sprawling, dimly-lit labyrinth of hallways and secrets, is far from comforting. Max quickly becomes suspicious of its caretakers and residents, especially when he’s warned to stay away from the forbidden fourth floor. As he investigates, Max begins to unravel chilling connections between the home’s history and his own fragmented upbringing in the foster care system.

DeMonaco, known for The Purge franchise, attempts to pivot toward a more cerebral kind of horror here, but his direction lacks cohesion. There’s a palpable atmosphere in the early scenes—echoing footsteps down empty corridors, whispered warnings from cryptic residents—but the sense of dread is undercut by the film’s tonal inconsistencies. At times, it seems like The Home wants to delve into the psychological unraveling of its protagonist; at others, it leans into almost campy haunted house territory. The result is a film that feels tonally adrift.

Adam Cantor co-wrote the script with DeMonaco, and while there are flashes of ambition in the film’s thematic underpinnings—trauma, identity, aging, and the cyclical nature of abuse—these ideas are never explored with enough depth to land meaningfully. Instead, the film relies heavily on exposition dumps and obvious symbolism, robbing the mystery of its potency.

Perhaps the film’s most glaring issue is its casting of Pete Davidson in the lead role. While Davidson has shown surprising range in comedic and semi-autobiographical roles like The King of Staten Island, here he is simply unconvincing. Max is meant to be haunted, broken, and quietly unraveling, but Davidson’s performance lacks the gravity to sell that transformation. His signature slouched body language and ironic detachment feel out of place in a film that demands emotional rawness and tension. Every line delivery teeters on the edge of parody, even in moments that are meant to be harrowing.

Instead of grounding the character in vulnerability, Davidson often looks lost—emotionally and narratively. Whether that’s due to the undercooked script or a fundamental miscasting is debatable, but the end result is the same: the emotional center of the film rings hollow.

Surrounding Davidson is a supporting cast that includes seasoned actors like Bruce Altman as the enigmatic Dr. Sabian and John Glover as one of the home’s eerier residents. Altman, usually reliable in enigmatic authority roles, is given frustratingly little to do beyond vague warnings and sinister looks. Glover brings some unsettling gravitas to his scenes, but the script sidelines his character too often.

Marilee Talkington as Gretchen is similarly underutilized. She hints at the possibility of deeper character arcs—complicity, guilt, buried secrets—but the screenplay never lets her or any of the residents fully breathe. These characters are treated more like puzzle pieces than people, reducing any opportunity for meaningful emotional investment.

One of the more disappointing aspects of The Home is how generically it treats its setting. The retirement home could have been a rich environment for horror—a place that embodies memory, decay, and forgotten lives—but DeMonaco reduces it to a haunted mansion template. Flickering lights, locked doors, strange noises in the night, and of course, the obligatory forbidden floor. The fourth floor, meant to be a locus of fear and revelation, ends up feeling like a lazy plot device instead of a genuine source of terror.

Even the cinematography, while competent, rarely elevates the material. Shadows linger just long enough to be obvious, and the muted color palette grows tiresome rather than atmospheric. There are attempts at dream sequences and surreal imagery, but they lack visual inventiveness, making them more confusing than compelling.

There’s a version of The Home that could’ve worked—one where Max’s journey into the building mirrors a descent into his fractured past and identity. But this potential is buried under superficial storytelling. The link between Max’s foster care upbringing and the home’s dark secrets is meant to be revelatory, but it’s telegraphed so early and clumsily that by the time the truth is unveiled, it lands with a thud instead of a gasp.

The film touches on elder abuse, the trauma of childhood neglect, and institutional corruption, but these are treated as thematic window dressing. Rather than engaging with these ideas, The Home uses them to dress up a very conventional and uninspired horror plot.

Clocking in at just ninety-five minutes, the film feels much longer due to its sluggish pacing. Long, dialogue-heavy scenes that should build tension instead meander with little payoff. The middle act, in particular, is bogged down by repetitive sequences of Max sneaking through the halls, discovering scraps of paper or overhearing cryptic conversations—without any real escalation of stakes.

By the time the third act rolls around, what should be a climactic series of revelations and psychological breakdowns instead feels perfunctory and anticlimactic. The finale is both predictable and emotionally flat as if the film itself has lost interest in what it’s trying to say.

The Home is a frustrating missed opportunity. The premise—a troubled man uncovering a sinister conspiracy in a retirement home—has all the ingredients for a compelling psychological thriller. But between Pete Davidson’s miscast performance, an underwritten script, and direction that can’t commit to a clear tone or vision, the film collapses under the weight of its own ambitions.

There are a few eerie moments and some brief flashes of thematic depth, but not enough to salvage a film that’s ultimately more tedious than terrifying. In the end, The Home feels like a place you want to check out of far sooner than its runtime allows.