Scary movies have long considered the twilight years to be twilight zones. Fear of aging, the degenerating body, neglect: In horror, getting old is hell.
Such is the case in the new supernatural horror film from the director James DeMonaco, the creator of the “Purge” franchise. Pete Davidson stars as Max, a graffiti artist who avoids jail time by doing community service as a live-in custodian at a stately and sprawling retirement home in upstate New York.
As soon as he arrives, the staff warns him to stay away from the fourth floor, the first ominous sign that something is frightfully amiss. The residents are friendly, if dotty, but something’s up with the doctor (Bruce Altman), whose strange obsession with Max’s eyeballs manifests in one of the film’s more nerve-plucking encounters.
As deathly things start happening around the home — messages about “marked ones” appear on walls, and a resident dies by impalement on a fence — Max realizes the caretakers are anything but. Yet he stays put, one of many disbelief-suspending conundrums that the screenplay (by DeMonaco and Adam Cantor) puts the characters through with a straight face. It seesaws between creepy and dippy, although it pulls no punches in its indictment of the American elder care system.
As he did in “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” Davidson displays a terrific knack for horror dramedy, disarmingly playing an Everyman navigating a deranged world. The cast includes theater heavy hitters — John Glover, Jessica Hecht, Mary Beth Peil — who ace their assignments.
The Home
Rated R for gore and violence against elders. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
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