Home Sick (2003) 4/10

To me, Home Sick came out of nowhere. I was unfamiliar with the producer and director but apparently these guys have established themselves with quite a rep. The director has done several features including Pop Skull and the producer worked with Tobe Hooper on Mortuary. Home Sick is a long way from Mortuary and its easy to see why it took years to get this out on dvd finally.

Home Sick is about a group of 20 somethings hanging out at a party of sorts when a strange man toting a briefcase full of razor blades enters, played by bill mosely, and asks them all who they hate. When one party goer says everyone the blood soon starts to flow as all the friends start to drop one by one. Who's the killer and why?

Home Sick is very roughly put together. Its the first feature after the film makers graduated from school and it shows. The script is at times hard to follow and seems to be at the rough draft stage. The film limps along from one contrived scene to the next with no reality or believability. Horror films are supposed to be unreal but when the motivations and actions of the characters make no sense it's really hard to care. The acting is terrible, feeling more like a bunch of friends making a monster movie rather then professional actors. The directing is rough with boring setups and poorly lit scenes. The gore is amateurish at best. The lighting could have hid this but instead the director of photography decided to put a spot light on most of em making the gore look that much cheesier.

In short, there's nothing here worth watching. Sure its got Bill Mosely, for about 4 minutes, and Tom Towles, for about 7 minutes but that's about it. Honestly they only make the rest of the actors look that much worse. I suppose its a good effort for the first film out, but there's really no excuse for a bad script. Scriptwriting costs nothing but time.

Gore-medium

Nudity-mild

Overall - 4/10