Homestead

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 movie starts off well enough, it looks good and while the dialogue is iffy (as it remains throughout the movie), it clearly establishes the main characters. Once a new character enters shortly after, there's actually a great deal of tension. Then DDP shows up and it all goes limp, slumping to the floor and never getting back up.

The synopsis and setup make you think this little girl is going to be a total badass and save her family. Sligh's acting was so good that I was actually becoming invested and looking forward to see her become that hero. But she is totally wasted and the story suddenly becomes ill-paced, generic, and predictable. The tension dies as the movie slowly and weirdly shifts antagonist motive, gives us action that is unimaginative and either happening offscreen or onscreen with terrible special effects, and becomes increasingly clear with us that we're not getting the David vs Goliaths battle we were waiting for. The character is actually given a disappointingly small amount to do. And that's too bad because the actress was ready to give us something special. The writing really let her down and the movie ultimately lets us all down. Bottom line, watch "Becky" instead.

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.

I was expecting a decent western flick. The story had promise but there was so much missing. The acting was decent and some of the dialog was well written. What ruined it was all the missing ingredients for a decent western. Using a brass frames pietta 1958 Remington black powder pistol was a big sin. Remington never made brass framed pistols, Those are cheap replicas made today. Pa stated he had a heifer and was waiting for a bull to start breeding. Where did the heifer stay? All they had was a one room shack with a good electrical service as the lighting was poor and too bright. No corral, barn, of any kind for animals, Not even a single horse in the whole movie. There was too much un-needed conversations that drug on forever.

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.