Pete Davidson is Trapped, Along With the Rest of Us, in ‘The Home’
There’s a mystery to be solved in The Home, but it’s not the one the filmmakers intended. The real question — one that 97 torturous minutes of muddled storytelling, tiresome horror tropes and poorly delivered social commentary cannot answer — is who thought former Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson could carry a horror movie? At its best, a horror film features an empathetic lead whose fate is of personal interest to the audience. But Davidson, an actor of limited range who’s made a career out of projecting an air of weapons-grade disinterest, cannot generate a scintilla of sympathy for his character. The only reason we root for him to succeed is that when he does, the movie will be over.
Until that blessed moment, Davidson is our somnambulant tour guide through the creepy, dilapidated retirement home where most of James DeMonaco’s film takes place. DeMonaco, who directed the much better The Purge, never zeros in on what The Home is really about. Or, more accurately, he zeros in on the wrong thing, because he’s too busy doing other, noisier things that ignore the most promising aspects of the story. Davidson plays Max, whose life went sideways years ago when his older brother committed suicide. Since then, Max has become a chain-smoking, hoodie-bedecked wastrel and — for narrative convenience only — a rather spectacular artist. This vein of sibling trauma is one that DeMonaco, who co-wrote the thin script with Adam Cantor, will occasionally revisit for fleeting moments that Davidson is in no position to render any deeper.
