Home Safe

For secular viewers with an interest in the outré, there can be a unique appeal to Christian productions, which at their most knee- jerk conservative subvert mainstream entertainment's traditional "wholesome" signifiers with draconian proselytizing that ranges from groaningly out-of-touch to downright shocking. While more recent entries in this genre, like Kirk Cameron's appalling prosperity gospel stroke-fest SAVING Christmas, push the genus to its logical endpoint of absurdity, the groundwork was laid in films like HOME SAFE, an innocuous- seeming but ultimately noxious "family" flick from the usually-less-tone deaf Mark IV Productions.

From its opening credits, shown over a scene of preteen boys helping a tiger escape from the zoo, the film alerts the audience that we're in for it with one of those "based on a story suggested by ___" titles that evokes an aunt or grandmother sending you an unwanted newspaper clipping. Like the myriad plot lines the film races to establish thereafter, this second-hand news is utter nonsense, but – again like your little old granny – that doesn't stop the film from trying to shove it down your throat anyhow.

The Donavans are a supposedly average middle American family, the wife and eldest son of which have recently converted to Christianity while the father and youngest remain on the fence. We're introduced to dad at breakfast, griping about the impending arrival of his own father, who he resents for constantly telling embarrassing stories about his childhood shenanigans. Picking up gramps at the airport, the family ends up bringing home a dog they find on the street as well, with the pooch quickly becoming best friends with the younger boy.

Of course, grandpa begins driving dad nuts almost immediately with endless recapitulations of his childhood, while the dog, which the boys give the truly dunderheaded name "K-9," drives everyone bonkers by rampaging through the house. The eldest son is working on a drawing for his brother (in addition to proselytizing every night before bed), while the youngest struggles to succeed on the baseball field because he won't follow his coach's instructions. For some reason, the mother is convinced her pair of well-behaved kids are out-of-control hellions, and she repeatedly lays the blame on her husband, who she insists is too weak-willed to establish boundaries through good old-fashioned corporal punishment (for what?!?).

All this and I still haven't mentioned the escaped snake at the school, the father's surprising career as principal (apparently he's too weak-willed to raise two kids but disciplined enough to manage a whole school of them?), and a shocking last-minute conclusion that – as far as I could tell – seemed to involve someone being propelled at warp speed through the family's sliding glass door. And of course, who could forget that tiger from the opening credits?

Stuffed to the absolute breaking point for a 73-minute film, HOME SAFE is captivating for all the wrong reasons, not the least of which are its frequent, violent contradictions between the reality the characters describe and the one the audience is experiencing. Despite mom's constant haranguing about grandpa's stories, for instance, which supposedly revel in his son's anti-authoritarian childhood behavior, the man we're presented with today seems born more of the Jake Morgendorffer school of emasculated parenting, with any developmental link to his supposed childhood self left wholly to the imagination. Furthermore, it's never explained why the wife is convinced her children are such brats anyhow. Aside from being driven by peer pressure to help the tiger escape (something mom never learns about anyhow), the youngest son seems as well-behaved as any parent could ask, and his Bible-thumbing brother somehow manages to one-up him at that. For a film almost pathologically fixated on the supposed collapse of the American family (thanks to – what else? – the perennial evangelical boogeyman of "Secular Humanism"), the portrait it paints of one is surprisingly harmonious, with the sole exception being the parents' constant flipping out over an old dude's innocuous and boring stories.

In the end, this perverse obsession with masculinity is what really propels HOME SAFE beyond the realm of badness into outright toxicity. The film implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) suggests that the world would be a better place if only the fathers would spank their children more, and its absolute nadir comes in a wistful speech by the mother where she fondly reminisces about her own father's comforting punitive hand. That she follows this up by admonishing her husband to be more severe with their own children since she, being a woman, can't do it herself perfectly encapsulates the film's depiction of Christianity at its most odiously misogynistic, less appropriate for kids than to serve as a centerpiece exhibit at a psychological seminar.