James DeMonaco’s ‘The Home’ might look like your average gore-filled horror film, but it refuses to play by the typical rules. Instead, it transplants fear into a retirement home, a setting meant to feel safe and predictable. With Pete Davidson delivering the most intense performance of his young career, the film transforms familiar tropes into a haunting study of memory and deception.
Retirement facilities have rarely been used as backdrops for horror, but DeMonaco transforms them into an unnerving, institutional maze where the real terror is reality rather than the supernatural. Through it’s unlikely setting, ‘The Home’ offers a horror experience that’s both chilling and thought-provoking.
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Inside ‘The Home’
In ‘The Home,’ Pete Davidson stars as Max, a troubled young man sentenced to community service at a mysterious old-folks home called Green Meadows. What begins as janitorial work soon spirals into a psychological nightmare, as Max uncovers unsettling secrets about the home’s staff, its aging residents, and his own past. Haunted by visions and increasingly unsure of what’s real, Max is drawn into a conspiracy involving ritualistic experiments and generational betrayal.
The film blends psychological horror with gothic atmosphere, turning a place of supposed care into a house of eerie manipulation and buried trauma. As Max’s mind unravels, ‘The Home’ explores themes of grief, youth, and institutional decay, culminating in a twisted, violent ending that redefines who is truly in control.
WATCH THE TRAILER of the Film and the Revolution: ‘Can I Go Home Now?’
The Children Around the World Continue to Ask the question
A New Direction from The Purge Creator
James DeMonaco, best known for building ‘The Purge’ universe, takes a subtler approach here. Collaborating with co-writer Adam Cantor, DeMonaco’s direction in ‘The Home’ is a striking departure from the explosive, dystopian chaos of ‘The Purge’ franchise. While those films thrived on societal allegory wrapped in adrenaline-fueled violence, ‘The Home’ is quiet, claustrophobic, and drenched in psychological dread. DeMonaco trades urban anarchy for eerie, sub-urban stillness, proving his versatility as a filmmaker and his willingness to explore more intimate, character-driven horror.
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In ‘The Home,’ DeMonaco slows the pace and narrows the scope, allowing tension to build gradually within the confined, decaying walls of the retirement facility. His camera lingers in long, unsettling takes, capturing flickers of movement in shadowy corners and drawing viewers into Max’s growing paranoia. This technique allows him to amplify emotional unease rather than external conflict, and it results in a far more layered story. Where ‘The Purge’ asked, “What if all laws vanished for a day?”, ‘The Home’ wonders, “What if you couldn’t trust your friends and family?” The latter is no less terrifying, and arguably more disconcerting.
Pete Davidson’s Shift from Comic to Complex
Pete Davidson delivers a stellar performance in ‘The Home,’ shedding his trademark comedic persona for a deeply internalized, emotionally damaged role. As Max, Davidson channels an intensity and vulnerability that’s raw and restrained. There’s a haunted quality to his portrayal, a sense that Max is battling something far bigger than what appears on the surface.
Davidson’s performance is particularly striking due to its physicality. It’s seen in the way he slouches down hallways, flinches at shadows, or stares just a beat too long at the elderly residents he suspects are a part of something sinister. He communicates just as much through silence and stillness as he does with dialogue, grounding the film’s more surreal or horrific moments.
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What makes his work here so surprising isn’t just the shift in genre, it’s how convincingly he embodies a character mentally unraveling in real time. In Max, we see a man searching for meaning in the wreckage of his past, and Davidson plays him with a compelling mix of suspicion and desperate curiosity. It’s a performance that lingers long after the final twist, signaling a new chapter in Davidson’s evolving screen presence and proving he’s more than capable of carrying complex dramatic weight.
Davidson’s upcoming work includes ‘The Pickup,’ a heist-action comedy which will be released on Prime Video on August 6th. He is also rumored to appear in another heist film called ‘How to Rob a Bank’ in 2026.
Related Article: https://www.hollywoodinsider.com/pete-davidson-best-friends/
Within the Walls
Shot in a New Jersey retirement complex, the film deliberately blurs time. The set design blends old-fashioned and modern aesthetics, which disorients both Max and the audience. Long tracking shots, narrow hallways, and mirror symmetries emphasize Max’s increasing isolation and fractured perspective. The sound design in the film functions as misdirection with voices screaming through walls, echoing footsteps in the hallways, and distorted music are more unsettling than classic jump scares.
‘The Home’ mostly avoids cheap, obvious scares. Instead, it builds dread slowly through unreliable narration, nonlinear storytelling, and symbolic imagery creating a deeper puzzle within the film. Max’s hallucinations and the lies he’s told feed the flame toward a bold, gut-wrenching twist in the final act.
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A Unique Horror
‘The Home’ isn’t a conventional horror story, it’s polarizing, ambiguous, and unapologetically freaky. It’s anchored by Pete Davidson’s career-defining lead, moody visuals, and themes that echo real-world fears of aging and loss. DeMonaco takes horror and discomfort seriously, using Green Meadows as both a physical and psychological labyrinth.
If you crave horror that doesn’t give you a familiar structure and trades big scares for an unsettling atmosphere, this film answers the call. It’s a place where memory is mistaken, terror comes in quiet whispers, and a trusted institution becomes the most dangerous site of all.
Welcome to ‘The Home.’ Nothing is what it seems.
Cast: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Mary Beth Peil
Cinematography: Anastas N. Michos | Editor: Todd E. Miller
Director: James DeMonaco | Writer: James DeMonaco, Adam Cantor | Producers: Bill Block, Daniel Hank, Sébastien K. Lemercier, Thom Zadra
By Rachel Squire
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Rachel Squire is a passionate writer with a strong commitment to authentic storytelling and ethical journalism. As a writer for Hollywood Insider, she brings a deep appreciation for cinema’s power to inspire positive change. She values promoting meaningful media over gossip and sensationalism, and strives to contribute to a culture of integrity and substance in entertainment journalism.
Rachel Squire is a passionate writer with a strong commitment to authentic storytelling and ethical journalism. As a writer for Hollywood Insider, she brings a deep appreciation for cinema’s power to inspire positive change. She values promoting meaningful media over gossip and sensationalism, and strives to contribute to a culture of integrity and substance in entertainment journalism.
