Hell Is Where the Home Is (2018)

"Hell is where they're showing this"

Receiving its world premiere on the main screen at London's Frightfest last year, HELL IS WHERE THE HOME IS makes its digital debut on that festival's very own label through Signature Releasing.

Four ghastly obnoxious young people rent a luxury isolated mountain getaway for the weekend, not knowing that the owners have been despatched in a pre-credits sequence. They have booze (it looks like sherry but I suspect it's not) and at least one of them hoovers up cocaine as if a national shortage has been declared. Do not play a drinking game with this man's onscreen habit or you will be under the table before the end of the first act.

While they're all drinking, drugging, shagging and squabbling (and thus endearing themselves not a jot to the audience unless said audience consists of similar superficial narcissitic nobodies & surely such have far more frivolous and self-damaging ways to spend their time than watch a film), the doorbell rings. It's Fairuza Balk. Her car has broken down and can she use the phone?

Needless to say, an actress of Ms Balk's calibre (and therefore cost) isn't going to last long in a low budget film like this and sure enough soon something happens to her to render her offscreen EXCEPT the film-makers forget we need to see her later on so when we do it's a stand-in with a flannel on her face.

Our leads argue some more and get themselves into even more trouble before the bad guys turn up, wielding machetes and going full home invasion. They are brutish, tattooed, boast gold teeth and speak in grunts and you'll be rooting for them all the way as the far more sympathetic individuals in this frankly miserable film that takes far too long to get going for something that only runs for 83 minutes. 

Director Orson Oblowitz tries the odd nod to Argento (a blade being forced between teeth by a black-gloved assailant) and lights the end of the film in Bava greens and pinks but the opening half an hour is so devoid of any redeeming features that by then we're not prepared to cut him any slack. Composer Jonathan Snipes opens and closes with a tinkly giallo theme that has you hoping that with its isolated glamorous setting we're going to get a FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON. Instead we get four morons for a bad night in. The Frightfest Presents label has brought out a lot of great stuff in the last couple of years, much of it covered on here, but unless you are a label completist you can give HELL IS WHERE THE HOME IS a big miss.

HELL IS WHERE THE HOME IS is out on Digital HD on Monday 16th December 2019

Keep Watching (2017)

"Found Footage Home Invasion Horror"

Yes they're still making them. If nothing else KEEP WATCHING, which is out on DVD this month from Sony, does demonstrate nicely a few exploitation tropes that have been in use now for more than seventy years, namely:

1 Combining previously proven successful concepts. 

In 1943 it was FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN. We're still waiting for ANNABELLE MEETS CHUCKY. In the meantime here's Found Footage Meets Home Invasion. 

2 Killing the most expensive cast members first.

I suppose this could be considered a spoiler, so I'll leave you to discover who cost the most (probably) out of Leigh Whannell and Ioan Gruffudd.

3 Not Strictly Adhering to Your Concept For the Sake of a Lower Certificate.

So a gang has broken into a family's house while they were on holiday and installed minute cameras everywhere, so the subsequent horrors can be broadcast as entertainment on the internet. Somehow they manage to position the cameras in the bathroom so judiciously that we cannot see when someone is on the toilet, or in the shower, because taps and curtains and other AUSTIN POWERS-like contrivances serve to obscure our view. Our view of this snuff film featuring real deaths that is apparently going out on the internet. The Internet. That haven of coyness and sensitivity that people will pay for more of. 

4 Ripping off a better film at the end that makes you think 'why didn't I watch that instead of this'?

I won't say which one because, you know, spoilers, but let's just say I saw it coming.

If, however, you find the above appealing then KEEP WATCHING is definitely for you. I will admit I liked the use of drones as part of the internet feed, but it also added to the general daftness of the concept. Sony's discs contains no extras of note.

KEEP WATCHING is out on DVD now from Sony. The UK cover is up there. The US cover seems to think balloons are a bigger seller than a terrified girl. And who am I to argue? Perhaps a naked American man will steal them.