COME HOME (2023) Review by Steve Kirkham

COME HOME (2023)

3 stars
Miracle Media. Digital. Out Now

A couple – Mel (Caitlin Zoz) and Ikenna (Chinaza Ushe) – are driving through small town, backwoods America. They are moving there as she has inherited a cabin, which has been in the family for generations, located in the remote Adirondack Mountains. Set within a forest and near a lake, it is the ideal escape from the madness of city life in New York. A way to reset their lives.

Their friends Taylor (Paton Ashbrook) and Arjun (Sathya Sridharan) come to visit and get a taste for this different way of life. As is some kind of tradition in horror movies set in wooded areas, they tell tales by the campfire. Mel says there are stories of a lady who haunts the lake. If you listen carefully you can hear her saying ‘come home’. An outsider came there and fell for a local woman. She called him her beautiful bird. But then one day he was chased into the woods by shadows. She waited but he didn’t return. Then one day a beautiful dead bird was left on her porch… she walked to the lake and never came back. Supposedly her ‘spirit still roams this land’ and people disappear in the woods.

This is much to the amusement of her husband and friends, but of course we know this is setting up what will later transpire… soon they are hearing noises and voices emanating from the forest – then one of them goes missing.

The melancholic music score adds to the atmosphere and this is beautifully shot – however there are far too many static shots of the surrounding nature and landscape and the various noises that emanate from there – trying to infer a kind of unearthly presence? It is a very slow build but to what? The narrative feels muddled and eventually leads nowhere. A clue to why this is a frustrating viewing experience might be in the credits – as it list all the cast as the writers, you kind of know they made this up as they went along.

Steve Kirkham