Home Sick
Starring: Lindley Evans, Forrest Pitts, Brandon Carroll
Writer: E.L. Katz
Director: Adam Wingard
A mysterious man with a suitcase full of razors shows up to a booze/welcoming party, demanding from each guest the name of someone they hate. For every answer, he cuts his arm open with a razor blade, all smiles the entire time. The last person to be asked screams out that they hate everyone in the fucking room, putting Mr. Suitcase into a razor blade frenzy on his arm and dripping blood all about. After that, he dips out with a quickness. But shortly after, people that were named to the mysterious man begin turning up dead, which ultimately means the party guests' lives are at stake, too.
Adam Wingard and E.L. Katz finished up this little low-budget beast in 2003, but it didn't make its way onto DVD until 4 years later, thanks to Synapse. Made on a micro-budget with blood, sweat and tears, Home Sick is so obviously a labor of love and watching the featurette on the DVD proves that Wingard is indeed one ambitious mother fucker. While some things didn't come out as planned and conflicts arose during production, the idea was to make a gory as shit horror film that demonstrates death in the most fantastical ways. In that respect, this film is a grand success and a hell of a lot of fun.
Every fault Home Sick has ultimately helps it, if you ask me. For example, Wingard and Katz were more or less newbs fresh out of film school when they began shooting. They knew next to nothing as far as providing makeup to their characters, and it shows. Everybody within the circle of friends looks to be strung out as shit on some type of drugs... a few of them are, but they all look like humans on the brink of becoming undead. Also, the characters' reactions to everything happening around them is highly suspect. ****Spoilers**** Take Candice (Tiffany Shepis, The Violent Kind); in one scene she comes home to find her Mother dead on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. So, she begins wallowing in the gore, pulling her clothes off and barfing on her Mom's chest seemingly in jubilant manner. Granted, the character is skeeted out of her mind on coke, but this is questionable behavior even for someone with an 8-ball snow flurry up their nose. ****Spoilers End**** Bottom line; it doesn't matter. The world Katz has written is fucked, and Wingard presents it in a dirty hallucinogenic Twilight Zone fashion. Expect the unexpected, prepare to be unprepared, throw all logic out the window and just enjoy it. I did.
****Mild Spoilers****
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Home Sick has some great editing --i.e. the couch scene with Tiffany Shepis and Forrest Pitts, fueled with many rapid shots and angles that demonstrate her drug high-- and quite a few stylish sequences for being so low budget, too. The lot of it has an 80's shot on video feel, but there are moments that go elsewhere, such as a wide zoom-in scene to a hotel early on in the film. Also, towards the end there is a brilliant slo-mo sequence of the “friends” approaching Uncle Johnny's house for help against the film's offender; it sets the tone perfectly. There's some heavy Italian horror influence here and there with the kill scenes and how weapons are shown. Lighting is dark but works to the film's advantage, especially a segment in a meth lab that quickly turns into a basement blood bath.
****Safe To Read****
With the exception of a few notable genre actors (more on that in a bit), most everyone else were people that Wingard and Katz knew from school or just friendship. With that being said, most of the performances are off-kilter, but it's another factor that helps the batshit crazy Universe created here.
First, we got Forrest Pitts playing Mark. Not necessarily the group leader but more levelheaded than the rest, looking like he just walked off the set of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. Pitts does fine playing probably the most normal one of the flick.
Lindley Evans (now Lindley Praytor) is Claire, just arrived back into town and is closest with Mark, though, it's still kinda rocky. The character is sadly uninteresting at first, but once things get going, Evans puts some life into the performance and I liked her quite a bit.
Will Akers is Robert, the timid nerdy guy of the group. Works at a funeral home with Mark, never done a rebel thing in his life. Akers gives a good bit of comedy towards the halfway point.
Matt Lero plays Tim, who pretty much is responsible for putting the whole group in peril. One of my favorites. Metalhead redneck. Not for great acting but because of his mannerisms and the way he says shit. He's hilarious.
Tiffany Shepis is smokin' hot in her role of Candice, the slutty, gothy coked out whack job. She gives the same type of performance as Lero; she's just super fucking quirky, in other words. ****Spoilers**** On top of the scene I mentioned earlier in which she bathe's in her Mom's blood, she also gives a crazed dance-like mop-up performance at her job, where there's every bit of a 10 second scene of nothing but her rockin' ass. She also shows the camera lens her flawless set of cupcakes! ****Spoilers End**** Sorry readers... but thank you, Shepis!
Now let's get on to the show stealer of the group, Brandon Carroll (Pop Skull, A Horrible Way to Die) as Devin, one of the most interesting, fucked up people in the film. Sportin' a tilted hat (which reads “Under this hat is a winner”), a jump suit and one hell of a deep southern drawl, you know the guy is out of his mind from his first moment on screen. ****Spoilers**** But towards the end, he staples his madness into your brain during a slo-mo shot of maniacal laughter that ultimately leads to the film's second barf sequence. ****Spoilers End**** Carroll rules, plain and simple.
Bill Moseley only has about 5 minutes in the film as Mr. Suitcase, but that short time is damn memorable and the main ingredient that puts this messed up story in motion. After an insanely creepy entrance --in which Moseley exits a bathroom and literally glides down the hallway through the inevitably doomed group-- he throws on the persona of a deranged motivational speaker with a smile as white as cartoon snow --much like Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He rarely lets go of this grin for the duration of his time on camera, and it's seriously unsettling. Moseley always excels in weirdo roles, and here is absolutely no exception.
Last but not least, Tom Towles as Uncle Johnny, the militant gun crazy hillbilly relative of Tim (Lero). ****Spoilers**** Mr. Towles gives some of the film's best dialogue during a late night dinner sequence that leads to a monologue of his character's sorrows about losing at a Texas chilli cook-off. If that's not enough to prove family craziness, his character goes from Uncle Johnny to Daddy with no explanation, then to a dancing finale showing just how belligerent he really is. ****Spoilers End**** Like Moseley, Tom Towles' part is limited, but definitely not forgettable.
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Jonathan Thornton does makeup FX for Home Sick --as well as portraying a pedo funeral home owner-- and it is a gorehound's dream! Roll call; a bathtub of innards (concocted with real deer guts), arm breaking with protruding bones, a nasty curb-like kicking, knife cutting through a foot, hammering to a head, gutting, fingernail removement, ax chopping... I could go on and on. At first, the killer himself has a giallo-ish appearance all in black with leather gloves, until the finale reveal. Effects are a real strong point here, for sure.
****Safe To Read****
Providing music for the film is Relapse Records band, Zombi. Fans of Goblin and John Carpenter scores will chew on their sound immediately, as they were born to do horror film music. There's also music from bands like Hellfire Club, Between the Buried and Me, Hopesfall and more. But it's really Zombi that brings it home.
The only disappointment I can think of is that fact that it took me this long to watch Home Sick. I remember reading about it several times on horror sites and even being excited about it, but for some reason just let it drift into obscurity. Well, glad I finally got on with it. There is so much to enjoy with this slasher, monster, gorefest, acid trip, horror hybrid. Highly recommended.
