John’s Horror Corner: The Home (2025), an eerie geriatric horror that I’d recommend you maaaaaybe skip.

MY CALL: Is this flick worth your time? Eh, it’s… maybe fine, low stakes. At least there’s a big gory finale. MOVIES LIKE The Home: This would pair well with, or better yet be entirely replaced by, The Boroughs (2026). A far better viewing choice would be A Cure for Wellness (2016).

Living a self-medicated and petty criminal lifestyle, an emotionally damaged artist Max (Pete Davidson; Bodies Bodies Bodies) is sentenced to community service for tagging a building. He will spend four months at a retirement home acting as the custodian. One interesting rule: stay off of the fourth floor, where the special needs folks reside. Well I guess we all know where all the interesting stuff in this movie are going to happen…

Max is welcomed by the residents (incl. John Glover; Smallville, Scrooged, In the Mouth of Madness). But right away some things seem a tad off at this retirement home. Max is haunted by sounds of screaming carrying through the air vents, weird nightmares about the stranger residents, secret messages written in his room, and a very strange online chat room. Then sadly, during his sentence/service, Max watches his favorite, more mentally sharp residents quickly descend into advanced dementia.

The gore is at times just kinda’ there (e.g., a dream sequence involving some entrails). But a suicide fence-impalement truly delivers a shocking and graphic bit! We also enjoy the gross eye-piercing syringes and oozing gags and, eventually, a wild finale.

Returning to the genre well after his Purge Trilogy, director James DeMonaco (The Purge, The Purge: Anarchy, The Purge: Election Year) may have lost his edge. I feel like an opportunity was missed in that the residents, from the outset, seem far too physically able and mentally sharp to be in a retirement home with this level of supervision. Sure, the fourth floor will house the dementia and whatever horrors we’ll find. But the clear attempt to oppose the fourth-floor horrors with the kind normalcy of the other residents feels cheap and unrealistic.

The mystery behind the retirement home, the seemingly sinister nurses (incl. Mugga; The First
Purge) and doctor (Bruce Altman; The Beauty), and Max’s foster parents (Jessica Hecht and Victor Williams) runs deep… and leads somewhere that many would consider dumb. I mean, I enjoy plenty of movies with dumb plots, twists and endings. But I expected better writing from the creator of The Purge (2013). I wouldn’t tell you not to watch it. But it sure doesn’t get any form of recommendation from me.

The movie closes with a brutal, gory, very graphic massacre. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t really “earn it”. So, it just wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been. Still, I didn’t hate it. And while I was no fan of the plot or its twists, the plot device leading us to this closing bloodbath surely drew an eyerolling (yet somewhat satisfying) grin from me. That finale was wild.