Homestead

It sure had me going until it bogged down. Characters mumbled their lines so I missed 80% of the dialog. So contrived. A bunch of bad guys.. an outlaw band.. and they don't have a horse? It has its moments, but ultimately turned boring. The soundtrack music was cheap and out of place... like from some cheesy film from the eighties. It was ultimately an amateurish production. Filmmaking is an art, and this movie lacked expertise in direction. Very good premise... the beginning really hooked me... but as it deteriorated, and revealed itself to be an amateur production, I lost interest, struggled to stay awake, and turned it off. Must have been a shoestring budget... no horses! A western and no horses....the bad guys just walking around for miles.. like something from Monty Python.

Decent movie if it was a movie. Just so everyone is aware before they go spend money to see this. It is basically the first two episodes to their show. A show that is only available on their app that also requires a monthly a subscription. This is either genius or stupid. For someone like myself that does not like shows because I cannot commit the time I feel totally ripped off. If you watch the movie and don't subscribe to continue the show you are basically left completely hanging at the end of the "movie" overall it was ok. Just feel they may have a better response if they were more clear on what this actually was.

I was very excited by the first act of this film, mainly due to the very interesting set of characters. Betsy Sligh in particular stole the show as a feisty adolescent with a professed itch for dangerous adventure, but all four members of her frontier family are excellent and well cast.

The costumes and setting are also very authentic, except for the glaring absence of any farm animals - not even a dog or horse in sight. Even the band of outlaws who turn up arrive on foot!

Said outlaws appear at the start of the second act, and that is where things go awry. This group of characters is not nearly as interesting, starting with the tired old cliche of a "hellfire preacher" leader iof the gang. There's an effort to give the others distinctive personalities and conflicts, but their interactions are muddled, as is the last half of the script.

Although the adolescent fireball Irene is set up as a "Becky" type vengeful warrior, her character soon gets lost in the messy script and has minimal impact.

Making things even worse, this is a movie plagued with the kind of illogical last minute pauses taken by movie villains that allow their victims to escape the jaws of death. Believability goes out the door fairly early and with it any real suspense.

It's too bad the writer-director didn't have someone looking over his shoulder to question his bad decisions. This could have been a minor classic.

This is not a movie. It's the first episode of a TV show. DO NOT waste your money going to see this. I wouldn't watch this even on a free service like Pluto TV.

The storyline started out interesting but at every turn it went the wrong direction. The dialogue and acting are also terrible.

There were audience members that left half way through the show. It's absolutely terrible. I've never said anything like this before about a movie. I seriously want my money back.

And at the end they ask you to scan a QR code to buy someone else a ticket. The only way I'd scan that QR code is for a refund. Hollywood just scammed me.

Having a guilty pleasure for what read as the "darker" element of the genre, checked it out.

The cinematography just brought back the 70s westerns that I grew up watching almost immediately, so settled in. Like most westerns, the antagonist is usual prevalent in the onset. Solid enough acting on all fronts, but what felt like it might head in the direction of interest...it plods along with very limited content, and even more limited expansiveness. Even the scenery, which can elevate these films, fell flat.

It's basically a broken family, a cabin, and some bad dudes out for revenge. That's it. Where some take this next level, the more recent (and pretty excellent) "Old Henry" excelled in bringing forth that classic feel...The Homestead just spins it's tires for the better part of an hour filled with unspectacular series of missed opportunities. I found it reminded me of a made for television (are these still a thing?) film. Very short, very uneventful, short on captivating violence that comes with even the most modern of the genre, and certainly mislabeled along the way as "horror", which confused me about the half way point, as the violence was pretty tame throughout. I can handle crossover appeal with the implied supernatural elements entwined with western films (High Plains Drifter) and horror element (Bone Tomahawk), this was more comparable to a Little House on the Prarie reinterpretation.

What comes is a very predictably boring run into the third act and an anticlimatic finish. Nothing stood out as anything more than mediocrity and a dud of a film.