As populations’ median ages continue to rise — and the future looks increasingly hazardous for all age groups — more movies are touching on senility, dementia, elder abuse and other topics that not long ago rarely got any screen airing. That includes the horror genre, which has typically been focused on terrorizing nubile youth. Joining such recent efforts as “The Taking of Deborah Logan,” “The Manor” and “The Rule of Jenny Pen” is “The Home,” a Swedish-language chiller in which a stroke victim moves into a care facility — but not alone, as unfortunately the few moments she spent clinically “dead” enabled a malevolent spirit to return with her from “the other side.”
This SXSW Midnighter premiere is likely to attract remake offers, though the heightened jump scares and violence they’ll likely pile on would only dilute what makes Mattias J. Skoglund’s sophomore feature so effective. Its eerily quiet approach to a fantastical story casts a spell of greater potency than many bigger, louder “possession” tales stocked with frightful effects and other hyperbolic elements. Less is definitely more in this modestly scaled, unsettlingly matter-of-fact creepshow.
Small-town pensioner Monika (Anki Liden) is puttering around her kitchen when she falls to the ground, out of camera range, and while physically incapacitated can be heard shouting “No! Go away!” at some unseen presence. Her son Joel (Philip Oros) drives up from Stockholm soon after, to put her affairs in order — it is clear to all but the lady herself that she cannot continue to live alone, or even with occasional in-home carer visits. Nonetheless, moving into the nearby facility Ekskuggan is very upsetting to Monika, not least because she continually forgets the matter has already been discussed with her many times over.
Not offering much help is her other son, Bjorn, apparently too busy with his expanding business and family to spare the time. So managing mom’s transition falls to Joel, who’s used to getting the short end of the stick. A none-too-successful musician who’s had some substance abuse and other issues (he still drinks like a fish), his distant-second-place standing gets reinforced when a groggy, bedridden Monika initially mistakes him for Bjorn. But the root of his insecurities goes deeper, to a late father (Peter Jankert as Bengt) who was an all-around abusive terror, particularly toward his wife and this “weaker,” gay offspring.
So it is very disturbing to Joel when his frail mother announces “Bengt was waiting for me” after her brush with death, then suffers physical harm — falling from her bed, a broken arm — when alone in her care home room. It is assumed these ails are self-inflicted, but other admittedly mind-muddled residents also begin reporting strange occurrences.
One night an orderly (Lily Wahlsteen) witnesses something in Monika’s room that causes her to quit her job on the spot. Clearing out his parents’ house in broad daylight, Joel is abruptly threatened by his father — or some vision like — before he/it vanishes as inexplicably as it appeared. His only ally in what begins to look like a supernatural predicament is childhood bestie Nina (Gizem Erdogan), who’s also employed at Ekskuggan. Things come to a head when she works a solo night shift there, inviting him to come over and investigate whatever phenomenon is at work.
As is often the case with slow-burn horror built on judicious restraint, those climactic events are arguably less effective in their relative explicitness than the preceding unease. But “The Home’s” last stretch is still satisfying enough, leaving viewers with a queasy sense that the menace has by no means been vanquished. It’s actually a narrative strong point that we’re never entirely clear just what that menace is: Bengt himself, back from the grave? Or some evil entity that can assume whatever form is most disturbing to its prey?
There’s nothing hammy or camp about the way the senior actors suddenly develop a predatory glean in the eye, inevitably preceding something awful coming out of their mouths. Unlike movies where the “demon” or what-have-you emits a stream of stock blasphemies and profanities, Skoglund’s script (co-written with Mats Strandberg, who authored the source novel) hands it cruelly precise, personal comments designed to inflict maximum psychological pain. That includes the despicable Bengt sneering at his petrified son, “I always thought you’d die first, from AIDS.”
The film’s craftsmanship is no less astute for being low-key, with a stripped-down, minimal feel to the suspenseful general aesthetic. That extends to the ominous ambient score by Toti Guonason, and the way that initially cheering institutional paint schemes in Vera Theander’s production design gradually develop their own off-putting qualities in cinematographer Malin LQ’s atmospheric imagery.