Director – Adam Wingard, Screenplay – E.L. Katz, Producers – E.L. Katz & Peter Katz, Photography – Andor Besci & Michael “Bear” Praytor, Music – Zombi (Steve Moore & A.E. Paterra), Makeup Effects – Disturbing Images (Supervisor – Jonathan Thornton), Production Design – Peter Katz. Production Company – Population 1280 Films/Synapse Films/Horizon Productions/Katz Brothers.
Cast
Forrest Pitts (Mark), Tiffany Shepis (Candice), Bill Moseley (Mr. Suitcase), Lindley Evans (Claire), Will Akers (Robert), Matt Lero (Tim), Brandan Carroll (Devin), Tom Towles (Uncle Johnny), Jonathan Thornton (Boss)
Plot
A group of friends are gathered to party when they are interrupted by a mystery man with a suitcase, which is opened to reveal it is filled with razor blades. The man grabs one of the girls and then asks the group about their greatest fears, while slashing his arm with a razor. Afterwards, the group is haunted by a mystery killer.
Adam Wingard has been a name on the rise in recent years. Wingard first appeared with Home Sick here and then gained festival attention with the hallucinatory horror Pop Skull (2007). He followed these with the better budgeted, indie likes of A Horrible Way to Die (2010) and the non-genre What Fun We’re Having (2011) and Autoerotic (2011). Wingard began to gain increasingly wider recognition with the likes of You’re Next (2011), The Guest (2014), Blair Witch (2016), Death Note (2017) and then the big-budget Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). He has also directed episodes of a number of multi-director anthologies, including The ABCs of Death (2012), V/H/S (2012) and V/H/S/2 (2013).
Although not released until 2007, Home Sick was filmed in 2002 when Wingard was only twenty and had just graduated from university. The film shows a clear enthusiasm for the horror genre in the employing of various actors with a name in the genre – Bill Moseley, Tiffany Shepis and Tom Towles. Also present is E.L. Katz who wrote several of Wingard’s films, as well as Adam Gierasch’s Autopsy (2008). Katz later went on to direct the appealingly nasty Cheap Thrills (2013) and the gritty crime film Small Crimes (2017), as well as episodes of The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020).
Home Sick is very rough when you come to it after familiarity with Adam Wingard’s subsequent, more professionally polished films. Aside from the aforementioned genre regulars, the film is peopled with amateur actors and looks as though it has been shot in people’s homes (around Bessemer, Alabama). It has nothing that ever resembles a coherent plot. However, it does show an enthusiasm for the genre, particularly when it comes to the liberal degrees of bloodshed spilt throughout.
Bill Moseley as Mr. Suitcase
The film is largely made by the name actors who elevate what would otherwise be an exceedingly amateurish film. Bill Moseley in particular gives a wild and deranged performance in his single scene appearance as a man with a suitcase filled with razor blade who enters the party, grabs Tiffany Shepis and then starts slashing his arm while demanding the others confess their fears. Tiffany Shepis runs rings around the rest of the non-professional actors, especially a scene where she seduces Forrest Pitts. She has a completely deranged scene where she tries to clean up her mother’s body on the kitchen floor and ends up covered in blood. Tom Towles is not up to much in his single scene appearance as an uncle of one of the group.
On the other hand, your suspicion is that without the names to elevate it, Home Sick would be a near-unwatchable mess. There is no clear idea why things are happening. We get no idea who Moseley’s Mr Suitcase is and why he plays a game with razors taunting the group about their fears as he vanishes immediately after that scene and we never meet him again. There seems to be a killer running around eliminating various of the friends – your first impression is this has something to do with Moseley’s Mr Suitcase but there is no clear idea why this is happening either. Your frequent impression of the film is that much of what went on was improvised on the day. It is hard to think from this that you are looking at the work of the future director of an A-budget vehicle like Godzilla vs Kong.
