14/03/2025 - Mattias J Skoglund's effective, modest horror takes full advantage of one of the biggest modern fears: moving into an assisted living facility

It might soon be hard enough to find anyone who doesn’t have to eventually move into an assisted living facility. People live longer, but their families are scattered all over the place – provided they even have them. It’s a terrifying thought, already explored in several well-meaning documentaries and making for an intriguing new trend in horror films. 

Mattias J Skoglund’s The Home [+see also:
interview: Mattias J Skoglund
film profile], screened at this year's SXSW in the Midnighter section, follows the likes of Poland’s 2024 Night Silence – straight into another nursing home, where everything is off, from the horrible lighting to the last personal trinkets saved from quickly-sold houses, and the empty-eyed residents, waiting for nothing. The (jump) scares are effective, but there’s another reason why this new wave of chillers works so well: they can be horrifying, but also touching. 

There’s no way of telling a story like this one and avoid loneliness or pain. When Joel (Philip Oros) comes back home after his mother Monika (Anki Lidén) falls in her kitchen, what follows is recognisable and, indeed, heartbreaking – one child’s sense of guilt and another’s brutal indifference, a parent’s confusion and fear of having to leave her own house. “Are you really going to leave me here? What have I done wrong?,” Monika asks him. The simple fact that these words are repeated everywhere, all the time, might be the single scariest thing in the film. 

Yet there’s more to be found here than musings on people’s sense of responsibility and ageing societies. Joel’s mother is tortured not just by herfledgling mind: she’s plagued by visions of his late violent father, apparently still refusing to let her go. This adds another layer to the story, dealing with trauma and domestic violence, which always crawl out despite families' best efforts to try and hide it. 

It’s a hellhole inside, but outside isn’t much better. Nothing feels quite right in this town. People are stuck on their past glory days, a bit like down-on-his-luck Joel, or in relationships that look good on paper but chip away at your self-esteem. Skoglund has an eye for the absurd or for finding scares in the most ordinary things. Even Joel’s childhood room gives you shivers, mostly because of an old Kanye West poster on his wall. He’s not afraid of heading into uncomfortable places, hinting at elderly sexuality or cruelty. The film gives off a disconcerting whiff of Excelsis Dei, an old The X Files episode set in a similar place and still difficult to brush off. 

Even supporting actors in The Home give very good performances and do wonders with soul-crushing one-liners. “I have a child that doesn’t want to see me anymore,” says one person, while another keeps on repeating a line from her past life as a secretary – after a long life, that’s all she has left. When Monika says, rather diplomatically, “This place is lovely, but it’s not for me,” you also feel like running out would be the best option. But their bodies and their minds won’t allow for it anymore, and nobody’s listening to their pleas anyway. The Home proves to be a surprisingly devastating and extremely effective horror film that, unlike its stuck protagonists, should really go places. 

The Home was written by director Mattias J Skoglund and Mats Strandberg, and produced by Siri Hjorton Wagner for [sic] film (Sweden), Three Brothers (Estonia), Compass Films (Iceland), with support from the Gotlands Filmfond and Sveriges Television. International sales are handled by LevelK.