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Review: Home Sweet Home

10687176_760664173987562_1288134391741237596_nThis Home Sweet Home is a new short film from Frank Sabatella not to be confused with David Morlet’s Home Sweet Home (2013) and John K.D. Graham’s Home Sweet Home (2013). Frank Sabatella is one of the best independent horror film makers in New York and he’s most known for his feature length film Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, which is currently on VOD everywhere. I’m obviously a big fan of his, so when I saw that he had a new film premiere on The Bone Yard this morning, I made sure to hurry over and check it out. Here are my thoughts.

Home Sweet Home is written and directed by Frank Sabatella with Marc Schoenbach. Cast members include Amanda Stewart, Kaleigh Tharpe, Ken Lugo, and The Turner Family. Special effects were created by Jeremy Selenfriend (Chernobyl Diaries, Men in Black 3).

Last year, Sabatella’s short flick, Children of the Witch, was my most favorite horror release of 2013. As with Night of the Pumpkin and The House That Cried Blood, Sabatella has a miraculous way of capturing the essence of Halloween; the fun, the macabre, the air, the energy from excited trick or treaters and excited men with their sexy costumed girlfriends. There was no Halloween release this year, but I figure now that Home Sweet Home is going to be his 2014 release…and it somewhat fits with the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. For me, mostly, it was exciting to see Sabatella step out of the world of Halloween and tackle a short film with an entirely different feel. At least I – and the rest of his fans – know he’s capable of stepping outside of his comfort zone.

Home Sweet Home is a laid back horror film that relies more on mystery and suspense than the expert special effects from Jeremy Selenfriend. Basically, a mass murderer known as “The Home Sweet Home Killer” is on the loose and is butchering one or more families on any given night. Of course this means that an attractive young woman (played by Amanda Stewart) just has to get naked and take a very long, very relaxing bath despite the fact that someone can kick open her door and stab her to death at any moment…not that anyone is complaining. True to all horror film clichés, an intruder breaks into her house and begins to stalk her from the other side of the bathroom door. Could the killer have gotten to the rest of her family already?

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All of the typical Sideshow Pictures qualities are ever present in Home Sweet Home, and I didn’t expect anything less. All of the films shot under the production company are well lit, well angled, set in a beautiful suburban environment with a good script backed by a fitting yet subtle scoring. Throw in some of the best blood in the business and a gaggle of fresh-faced starlets and you’re going to have a success story every single time. I wish that these Sideshow Pictures originals were shipped out to various film festivals because I do believe they’re good enough to win a bunch of awards in that circuit. Maybe winning awards doesn’t mean anything to those involved, but I just wanted to mention that their films, including Home Sweet Home, are very high quality. The hard work simply deserves to be seen.

I think my only problem with Home Sweet Home is that it wasn’t long enough, damnit! I have to wait an entire year to see a new short film from one of my favorite directors, and Home Sweet Home clocks in at seven minutes and some change. There’s so much that could have been done with an extra two minutes, I wonder why Sabatella and Schoenbach didn’t decide to use it to their advantage. Since they established through the script that the murderer was sometimes killing two families per night, they could have easily started this short by showing them finishing off the night’s first slayings. Or even the attack on The Family could have been highlighted with some flashes or cut away shots. Making Home Sweet Home even a minute or two longer wouldn’t have damaged the story or went into “going on for too long” territory. I can appreciate the old school method of building suspense, but I was looking for more from New York’s King of Scream.

Everything considered, this is still a solid piece of work from Sideshow Pictures and Frank Sabatella, although it is by far my favorite. I’m going to give a 7.5 out of 10. You can watch Home Sweet Home, Frank’s other films, and a handful of other films over at The Bone Yard, where a new horror short film will premiere every Wednesday. Make sure to bookmark that!

Michael DeFellipo

(Senior Editor)

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