Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives

Keep in mind the opening of the film with a woman being chased, at night, screaming into her mobile.

Cue a heavily pregnant Maria (Nilam Farooq) has just arrived at her and fiancé Viktor (David Cross) are hoping to open a new bed and breakfast. She’s on a call to her friend Holly (Olga von Luckwald) when she bumps into neighbour Mike (Anton Fatoni Schneider) and its clear he’s not happy.

By this time the viewer will have picked up that this is a one take film as Maria is followed into the house. Where a power outage and noises force her to call her father-in-law Wilhelm (Justus von Dohnányi) who’s a little creepy but tells her where the junction box is.

This happens to be in a huge basement, and in a long sequence wandering around looking for the junction box, the audience see a phantom figures flash into sight when the lights return. And then Maria discovers a room with artefacts dating back to the early 1900’s and a journal of an ancestor’s time in Africa with the German army.

Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives takes its time building up momentum and comes close to losing the viewer – the long sequence in the basement looks like padding.

As such writer and director Thomas Sieben doesn’t really develop the dread in the early part of the film, that would be expected taking the location into mind. He may have been handicapped by the restrictions of the one take discipline.

Having said that, it appears a stylistic decision to up the pace in the second half, with the film’s direction and director looking far more assured.

Overall it’s a fairly familiar tale and there isn’t that much depth to it other than possibly to show the weakness of the men in the face of danger looking for an easy way out. The male performances are perfunctory in comparison to Farooq who is compelling throughout.

Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives will be on digital platforms on 30 September 2024.