There are bad movies, and then there are movies that make you question whether film as an art form was a mistake. Home(2016), directed by Frank Lin, is the cinematic equivalent of tripping over your own feet, falling down the stairs, and realizing the stairs are actually made of poorly written dialogue and discarded Lifetime scripts.
It’s a horror-drama that wants to be profound, spooky, and emotionally complex — but ends up about as terrifying as a malfunctioning Roomba and about as moving as a church pamphlet left out in the rain.
If The Exorcist is filet mignon, Home is the leftover tuna salad you forgot in your car for three days.
The Plot: Jesus, Ghosts, and Uncomfortable Family Dinners
Let’s start with the premise, because frankly, that’s all this movie has — and even that’s being generous. Carrie, a devoutly religious young woman (played by Kerry Knuppe, who spends the entire runtime looking like she just smelled something awful), has her world rocked when her mother comes out as a lesbian and announces she’s marrying an atheist woman.
That’s right. This is a film that tries to combine The Conjuring with 7th Heaven and somehow ends up as The Room with crucifixes.
Carrie’s mother (Heather Langenkamp — yes, Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, bless her heart) and her new partner (Samantha Mumba, who looks like she’s rethinking her entire career) go on a business trip, leaving Carrie home alone with her new little stepsister, Tia. Because nothing says “healthy family bonding” like throwing your repressed, Bible-thumping daughter into a haunted house with a child she just met.
What follows is a series of supernatural “events” so underwhelming they make Ghost Adventures look like Hereditary. Doors creak. Lights flicker. Shadows move in ways that suggest the cinematographer tripped over a cable. Somewhere, a producer was probably yelling, “We’ll fix it in post!” while the editor quietly Googled “career change.”
Carrie starts to suspect that the house is haunted by an evil presence — though honestly, it could just be the spirit of good filmmaking trying to escape.
The Characters: Who Needs Development When You Have Dialogue This Bad?
The characters in Home are less like people and more like AI-generated archetypes from a Christian teen drama that got hacked by a goth kid.
Carrie is our lead — devout, judgmental, and constantly trembling in terror, though it’s hard to tell if she’s scared of ghosts or the script. Her entire personality can be summed up as “screams at shadows and hates lesbians.”
Her mother Heather is supposed to be the emotional center — a woman embracing her authentic self in middle age. But the movie treats her coming out like a plot twist in a soap opera. She spends her limited screen time giving teary monologues about acceptance while standing in front of what appears to be an abandoned Pier 1 Imports display.
And then there’s Samantha Mumba as… Samantha. Yes, they didn’t even bother giving her a fictional name. Mumba does her best, but you can see in her eyes that she’s mentally scrolling through her grocery list between lines.
As for little Tia, she’s the obligatory creepy child who stares into the middle distance, says things like “Mommy says the house talks to me,” and probably regrets signing that child actor contract.
Every conversation feels like it was written by someone who’s only seen human interaction in church pamphlets.
The Horror: Not So Much “Haunted House” As “Mildly Drafty Fixer-Upper”
If you’re hoping for scares, tension, or even mild unease, abandon hope now. The ghosts in Home are about as frightening as Casper after a Xanax.
There’s no buildup, no atmosphere, just random “boo!” moments that feel like they were inserted out of contractual obligation. Shadows move for no reason. Doors slam like a cat got trapped in them. There’s even a scene where Carrie is “attacked” by invisible hands, but it looks more like she’s trying to perform interpretive dance in zero gravity.
Even worse, the movie’s tone is wildly inconsistent. One moment it’s trying to be a heartfelt family drama about faith and acceptance; the next, it’s a Dollar Store exorcism flick complete with CGI smoke effects that look like they were rendered on a 2004 Dell laptop.
By the halfway mark, you stop being scared and start feeling bad for everyone involved. You can almost hear the ghosts sighing: “Please, just let the credits roll.”
The Themes: Jesus, But Make It Boring
Home desperately wants to be about something — faith, family, tolerance, the clash between old beliefs and new love. Unfortunately, it handles those themes with all the grace of a sermon delivered by a malfunctioning Alexa.
Carrie’s religious struggle could’ve been interesting if the film had any subtlety. Instead, we get endless scenes of her praying dramatically while staring at a crucifix, whispering things like “Why have you forsaken me?” to the ceiling fan. The movie treats her mother’s relationship not as a moment of liberation, but as a moral test wrapped in a haunted house allegory.
It’s as if the filmmakers couldn’t decide whether they were making a ghost story or an after-school special about tolerance — so they just smashed both scripts together and hoped no one would notice.
Spoiler: We noticed.
The Performances: A Masterclass in Overacting and Underreacting
Heather Langenkamp tries her best, but even horror royalty can’t save this trainwreck. Watching her deliver lines about lesbian guilt and supernatural evil feels like witnessing someone trying to recite Shakespeare while standing in quicksand.
Kerry Knuppe’s Carrie spends most of the film crying, praying, or shrieking. It’s less a character arc and more an emotional treadmill. By the end, she hasn’t grown as a person — she’s just exhausted.
Samantha Mumba… well, she’s there. She stares at walls, delivers exposition like she’s reading it off cue cards, and probably went home every night whispering, “I was in The Time Machine, for God’s sake.”
Even the ghosts seem phoned in. You half expect one to stop mid-haunt and mutter, “Sorry, I’m non-union.”
The Visuals: Low Budget, Lower Lighting
The cinematography looks like it was shot through a jar of expired Vaseline. Every room is lit like a cave, and the “haunting” special effects range from “high school project” to “Photoshop tutorial gone wrong.”
Frank Lin seems to think that shaky camera work and random lens flares equal tension. They don’t. They equal nausea.
By the final act, the film is just darkness, crying, and loud noises — the cinematic equivalent of a toddler throwing a tantrum in a blackout.
The Ending: The Real Horror Is That It Ever Got Made
The climax — if you can call it that — is a blur of shouting, glowing lights, and bad theology. Carrie confronts the evil in the house, which may or may not represent her own inner turmoil, or homophobia, or maybe just poor insulation.
After several minutes of what looks like a spiritual laser tag battle, the movie mercifully ends. There’s no real resolution, no catharsis, just the faint echo of everyone’s careers softly weeping.
You’re left staring at the screen wondering: Who approved this?
Final Verdict: 1/10 — Burn the House Down, Salt the Earth
Home is a cinematic exorcism of good taste. It’s one of those rare films where nothing works — not the script, not the scares, not the message. It’s so bad it’s almost educational.
Watching it feels like attending a haunted open house run by a church youth group that lost the plot halfway through and decided to wing it.
It’s tedious, sanctimonious, and unintentionally hilarious — a horror movie that forgets to be scary and a drama that forgets to be human.
In short, Home is where the heart isn’t. And if you ever find yourself watching it, just remember: you can always leave.
The ghosts did.
