Hauntingly gorgeous
A film that will linger in your mind like a faint musky sweet, incense in a ruined Basilica at midnight- especially when you remember that burning spinal fluid has the exact same scent.
There are films that claw at your senses, shrieking for attention with severed limbs and clowns with boundary issues. And then there is Home Education-a somber study in inherited lunacy that prefers to creep in politely, uninvited, and rearrange the furniture of your mind while you're still admiring the wallpaper.
The plot, if one dares reduce it to such a clinical term, concerns a family marinating in a rich broth of superstition, death-ritual, and isolation-induced theology. What begins as a peculiar household quirk evolves - inevitably, as these things do - into a full-blown metaphysical hostage situation. It all echoes, faintly but unmistakably, the greatest hits of cultish catastrophe: Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, the Manson Family Christmas Album. You'll find no poisoned punch here, but plenty of simmering delusion served deliciously tepid over a quiet fire.
The performances are magnificent - so good, in fact, that one suspects the actors may have simply wandered in from a nearby commune, still in character, and no one had the heart to stop them. There is a rare and dreadful grace to the trio at the heart of the film: These are roles inhabited, not performed- One of those rare alignments where talent, tone, and madness click into place like a loaded gun Of course, this is not a film for the impatient. If you require your horror with chainsaw wielding clowns in cornfields, or comically ironic brain eating vegan zombies - ideally while watching TikToks of cats in aluminum foil booties in large industrial stainless steel sinks - this may not be for you.
But for those blessed few who still possess an attention span longer than a reel, Home Education offers a sinister and meditative reward: a tale that trusts its viewer to listen, to notice, and above all, to wait.
I will conclude -with a withering nod - that I highly recommend it to those with actual taste and attention spans:. But don't be surprised if, halfway through, you start checking your own family tree for signs of quiet heresy.
There are films that claw at your senses, shrieking for attention with severed limbs and clowns with boundary issues. And then there is Home Education-a somber study in inherited lunacy that prefers to creep in politely, uninvited, and rearrange the furniture of your mind while you're still admiring the wallpaper.
The plot, if one dares reduce it to such a clinical term, concerns a family marinating in a rich broth of superstition, death-ritual, and isolation-induced theology. What begins as a peculiar household quirk evolves - inevitably, as these things do - into a full-blown metaphysical hostage situation. It all echoes, faintly but unmistakably, the greatest hits of cultish catastrophe: Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, the Manson Family Christmas Album. You'll find no poisoned punch here, but plenty of simmering delusion served deliciously tepid over a quiet fire.
The performances are magnificent - so good, in fact, that one suspects the actors may have simply wandered in from a nearby commune, still in character, and no one had the heart to stop them. There is a rare and dreadful grace to the trio at the heart of the film: These are roles inhabited, not performed- One of those rare alignments where talent, tone, and madness click into place like a loaded gun Of course, this is not a film for the impatient. If you require your horror with chainsaw wielding clowns in cornfields, or comically ironic brain eating vegan zombies - ideally while watching TikToks of cats in aluminum foil booties in large industrial stainless steel sinks - this may not be for you.
But for those blessed few who still possess an attention span longer than a reel, Home Education offers a sinister and meditative reward: a tale that trusts its viewer to listen, to notice, and above all, to wait.
I will conclude -with a withering nod - that I highly recommend it to those with actual taste and attention spans:. But don't be surprised if, halfway through, you start checking your own family tree for signs of quiet heresy.
- brickbishop
- 15 ago 2025