I was fortunate enough to catch this at a limited screening in my home town. I initially attended because it is my sincere belief that Tom Towles is one of America's most over-looked actors; consider, for example, his insightfully acted performance in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986, McNaughton). I was fascinated that he was going to be gracing a local film.
To be honest, I was expecting very little from Home Sick. There seem to be a dozen indie horror filmmakers for every street. Most are sloppy gorefests that are, at best, terrible pseudo-hybrid remakes with descriptions like The Blair Witch Project meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. However, it became increasingly apparent as the film rolled that Wingard's Home Sick owed more to Renoir than Riami.
The rainy shots that play under the opening credits, for example, seemed to be a direct homage to Renoir's unfortunately obscure Nana (1926). I, of course, attributed this to an over-ambitious hope that someone else (a filmmaker from Alabama, no less!) has seen this forgotten masterpiece. After the screening, though, my suspicions were confirmed; the delightfully kind Adam Wingard did acknowledge his debt to Renoir (as well as Resnais, Bergman, Schlondorff and, perhaps most surprisingly - Russian fantasy-film icon Aleksandr Rou!) However, he assured me, as I was also able to assess myself throughout the screening, that he was aiming for more than Altmanesque nods to the art-house classics that he adored.
What refrains Wingard from merely imitating the grand successes of the important filmmakers that came before him is that his dystopian outlook is injected into a clever and non-judgmental deconstruction of the gorefest horror subgenre. Wingard has a perceptive understanding of this subgenre that I know I haven't seen since Zulawksi and his masterwork, Possession (1981). Many would here point to Miike as a more apt and comparable filmmaker, but it seems evident, at least to me, that Miike is a poor man's Kiyoshi Kurosawa with all of the aggravating flaws of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and none of the master filmmaker's attributes.
Home Sick suffers a terribly low rating here at IMDb and I am not surprised as many seem to be coming from irate Bill Moseley fans expecting another Essence of Echoes (2002, Rikert). Wingard surpasses Rikert and his embarrassing attempts at cinematic innovations by embracing that film does in fact have a history without resorting to simply visually quoting the best decisions of great filmmakers, such as Tarkovsky, Clement or Deren.
Home Sick is an original masterpiece and undoubtedly the most important horror film since Dreyer's Vampyr or Bergman's Hour of the Wolf.
To be honest, I was expecting very little from Home Sick. There seem to be a dozen indie horror filmmakers for every street. Most are sloppy gorefests that are, at best, terrible pseudo-hybrid remakes with descriptions like The Blair Witch Project meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. However, it became increasingly apparent as the film rolled that Wingard's Home Sick owed more to Renoir than Riami.
The rainy shots that play under the opening credits, for example, seemed to be a direct homage to Renoir's unfortunately obscure Nana (1926). I, of course, attributed this to an over-ambitious hope that someone else (a filmmaker from Alabama, no less!) has seen this forgotten masterpiece. After the screening, though, my suspicions were confirmed; the delightfully kind Adam Wingard did acknowledge his debt to Renoir (as well as Resnais, Bergman, Schlondorff and, perhaps most surprisingly - Russian fantasy-film icon Aleksandr Rou!) However, he assured me, as I was also able to assess myself throughout the screening, that he was aiming for more than Altmanesque nods to the art-house classics that he adored.
What refrains Wingard from merely imitating the grand successes of the important filmmakers that came before him is that his dystopian outlook is injected into a clever and non-judgmental deconstruction of the gorefest horror subgenre. Wingard has a perceptive understanding of this subgenre that I know I haven't seen since Zulawksi and his masterwork, Possession (1981). Many would here point to Miike as a more apt and comparable filmmaker, but it seems evident, at least to me, that Miike is a poor man's Kiyoshi Kurosawa with all of the aggravating flaws of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and none of the master filmmaker's attributes.
Home Sick suffers a terribly low rating here at IMDb and I am not surprised as many seem to be coming from irate Bill Moseley fans expecting another Essence of Echoes (2002, Rikert). Wingard surpasses Rikert and his embarrassing attempts at cinematic innovations by embracing that film does in fact have a history without resorting to simply visually quoting the best decisions of great filmmakers, such as Tarkovsky, Clement or Deren.
Home Sick is an original masterpiece and undoubtedly the most important horror film since Dreyer's Vampyr or Bergman's Hour of the Wolf.