HOME SICK is about a party where this weird man in a blue suit shows up(walking in an extremely creepy way in which he seems to be on a skateboard or some type of cart) with a suitcase filled with thousands of razor blades. He asks the people at the party who each of them hate, and for every answer he slices his wrist with a different razor blade. After he has finished asking everyone, he stands up sings a song and then leaves. Soon after he leaves, everyone who was named begins dying in very bizarre and horrific ways. The characters quickly come to the rather unbelievable conclusion that is is all because of the man in the blue suit, and since one of the people at the party listed off everyone that was in the house, the fates of all the characters are at stake. This may sound like a weird premise for a horror film, but trust me. It works.What I loved most about this film is that it didn't feel like a modern horror film. This film is probably about as close as a modern day horror film can ever come to replicating the style, atmosphere, music, characters, and gore of a 70s horror film. It comes off so impressively and so beautifully that you feel nostalgic just watching it. I wish that more horror films these days could be more like HOME SICK. The opening scene in the bathroom is a perfect example of a scene right out of something like I DRINK YOUR BLOOD or a Dario Argento film. It comes off so effectively and with such imagination. There's no CGI gore. It's all practical visual effects. They work absolutely perfect.The performances come off good in a realistic way. The characters in this film are all completely psychotic and insane and their psychosis comes off all too real at times, particularly toward the end when certain events are depicted in such a gritty and guerrilla-style way about them. The music in this is absolutely perfect in setting a dark tone, completely with a sense of eerie detachment and weirdness that feels entirely appropriate. Again, it's just like something Tobe Hooper would have done. The intense atmosphere just fits perfect with the film's style.In terms of complaints I had for the film, I did find the middle of the film to be a bit slow and moody in a way that came off slightly awkward. I liked it, but I can imagine many horror fans feeling a little bored. I also didn't really particularly like any of the characters, but considering how they are all insane I suppose that was the point. I don't know, it's difficult to really complain about this film since everything is done so deliberately. If you love the bizarre and cheap horror films of the early 70s like the ones I mentioned above, I am really confident that you will love this film. It's a must-see for horror fans for sure. Check it out.

Quite dark and riveting at times, "Home Sick" sells it's story with extremely graphic gore tactics from the get-go...Written by E.L. Katz and directed by Adam Windgard, this is Indie film making custom-made for those who crave the red stuff... And lots of it! The viewer is drawn in from the opening scene, which is quite perverse and filled with an underlying feeling of dread. Soon there after, we are treated to some gut splattering, puss spewing, limb launching fun like I have not seen in some time. With solid acting by everyone involved, "Home Sick" delivers a well crafted peek into a hideous Alabama sub-culture, where day to day life appears dreadful enough without an added demonic force ripping people's heads off... The pacing is okay for the most part, however there were a few (un-needed) slower scenes that didn't seem to be plot related. This is easily over-looked because the very next scene may contain a fountain of entrails, just to liven things up. "Home Sick" is a worth while addition to any Indie Horror collection.

I'm so mad I watched this that I want to hit something. I refuse to believe this was actually a finished product. Home Sick (the title makes no sense) is about a group of friends (who don't seem to like each other at all) who are attending a welcome home gathering for one girl. During the lame wingding, Bill Moseley shows up with a suitcase full of razor blades and asks each guest to name who they hate. They do, and then one says he hates everyone at the party. Those named specifically start dying, which leads the "friends" to realize they're next. And somehow a demon gets involved.The only thing this dreck has going for it is piles of gore. And honestly, it's refreshing that "Home Sick" is an old fashioned splatter movie. Almost every death is shown in splattery red detail, and since I hated every character, I was glad to watch them go so graphically.Moseley is charming and weird, but only in the film for a few minutes. Tiffany Shepis almost gives a performance, but everyone else is unbelievably bad. People laugh for no reason. Who the hell was the guy in the garage with the glasses?? What was up with the demon guy having a lock of hair in the middle of an oozing scalp? Did the director REALLY tell the guy playing "Tim" to act like that? And saddest of all was Tom Towles, who started off being typically great and then lowered himself to the material.There's a reason this crap stayed on the shelf for as long as it did. Maybe someday it will be recast and re-edited and make a tolerable movie. As it is, I'm only giving a generous 4 because of all delightful red stuff.

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.