Hard Home

Mary (Simone Kessell) is running in the woods when she is attacked by a hooded man. He is the serial killer, Diablo Killer (Andrew Howard), but she is no damsel in distress. She turns the table on him and takes him captive in her high tech home. Three years earlier, she is moving into her self-designed home with her husband and physically handicapped daughter.

This is a less competent Saw. The first half is rather boring. There isn't enough tension. The audience can assume what happened and it becomes a slow roll with the reveal. The movie needs to up the ante. Instead of a silly elaborate maze, the story can raise the stakes by the daughter being possibly alive and held captive. The only interesting part is the slow chase. A lot of this is a little dumb. Mary should have a gun at least.

Where to start?

Hard Home (2024) is an incoherent mess of an attempt at making a genre horror/thriller for the American market on a budget.

Firstly, let's put that to bed straight away; despite the terrible accents, the non-specific locations, the 'casual' dropping of state names and occasional costumes, this is not an American film. It just wants to be. And to anyone but the most casual viewer it is fooling no one.

Secondly, this is film-making by Xerox; from the writing to the editing and the direction, Hard Home just apes the movies it so desperately wants to be. There is no substance here; it is like a rough cocktail made from inferior, store brand alcohol.

Thirdly, flashbacks are no substitute for a good narrative structure; by constantly framing the story using flashbacks the effect is one that resembles the 'story-so-far' montage intros from a TV series.

Fourthly... oh why should I bother? Hard Home isn't worth the effort.

Please avoid this plastic turkey of a film.

A semi well-made, "totally" bada@@ movie production that's at least entertaining, both the first half and the second more "adrenaline-pumping" one. For an presumable and expected low-budget production, it is more than acceptable; has its share of grief, sensation and revenge on a small scale.

The revenge part could have been more colorful and the ending was like "guys, let's finish up and go have a deserving lunch...".

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 4.5
• Production value/impact: 4.5
• Development: 5.5
• Realism: 5
• Entertainment: 6
• Acting: 5.5
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 6.5
• VFX: 7
• Music/score/sound: 6.5
• Depth: 4.5
• Logic: 2.5
• Flow: 5.5
• Thriller/drama: 4
• Ending: 3.5.

A grieving mother who is quite adept at making high tech smart home systems, lures the serial killer who brutally murdered her only daughter into a smart home labyrinth of various tortures and tests to torment and anger the killer as he tries to escape and survive at the same time. It does not seem to be the good idea to capture a serial killer of this magnitude and play games with him, but given the system tends to not give real justice in these kind of cases, you tend to agree with the mothers choice to take things into her own hands. She is totally obsessed and focuses her whole life into this one goal of punishing the killer. She's si obsessed that she does make a few terrible mistakes. Lots of cool tech, suspense, a bit of terror and tongue cutting, not for the squeamish or kiddos. No questionable content, nudity or foul language, entertaining suspenseful movie. Enjoy.

This is the worst film I've seen in a long, long time. Both the acting and the story are horrendous. Many things are implausible and there are large sections of the story seemingly missing. It's like the film lost its budget and they had to produce the final film with what they had at the time. If you go into the film expecting it to be terrible, you may actually have fun.

The house in this film is beautiful and this is the only part you'll enjoy as you cringe your way through the movie. The home designer in the story is also the main actor in the film, and the film passes her off as a genius engineer and designer. The problem is, it's plain to see this woman is not that type and clearly doesn't possess the whits or personality for such a role. She's also never ran a day in her life, as she looks like a young child when she runs, yet the film has her as a distance runner.

FYI - the 10/10 review is obviously fake and was written by the cast, crew or a friend of some sort. No able minded reasonable person would rank this movie above 2/10.