Home (2008)

94% of critics liked it
(35 reviews)
67% of users liked it
(2,251 ratings)

Life for an isolated rural family is upended when a major highway next to their property, constructed 10 years before but apparently abandoned, is finally opened.

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Rating, Runtime: PG-13, 1 hr. 58 min.
Directed By: Ursula Meier
Written By: Antoine Jaccoud, Ursula Meier, Olivier Lorelle
Genres: Documentary, Drama, Art House & International

In Theaters: May 1, 2009 Limited
On DVD: Jun 23, 2009
Studio: Diaphana Films

Critic Reviews

Janice Page, Boston Globe
Home is the engaging, darkly funny, surreal story of what happens when people who have thrived by keeping civilization at a safe distance suddenly find themselves pushed right back into its headlights.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
What happens would not make sense in many households, but in this one, it represents a certain continuity, and confirms deep currents we sensed almost from the first.
Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
Though the cautionary symbolism is clear here, the committee-written film (there were five scribes including Meier), smartly keeps its message quotient in check.
Andrew Schenker, Village Voice
Working with all-star DP Agnès Godard, Meier effectively communicates the sense of upended privacy.
Rob Nelson, Variety
Director Ursula Meier generally distinguishes her feature debut by not pushing elements to melodramatic or farcical extremes.
Aaron Hillis, Village Voice
Using cinema as self-therapy might be a selfish way to treat audiences, but Harden and Scheel's chemistry makes the mother-daughter dynamic universal.
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
It's a unique work of disturbing character poetry, though it may be a little too disturbing.
Peter Canavese, Groucho Reviews
Darkly funny, haunting, and perhaps hopeful...there's a keen sense of absurdism (and in Agnès Godard's brilliant photography a sort of surrealist realism, if there is such a thing) in the circumstances. [Blu-ray]
Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews
This suburban horror tale of a family's disintegration once modern life begins encroaching is reminiscent of such films as "The Cement Garden"...
Robin Clifford, Reeling Reviews
Moving from the richly filled, quiet life of Marthe and her clan to the hell that the road brings, the story...has a unique arc and is a true family tragedy.
John Hartl, Seattle Times
Gradually the movie turns into an ironic assault on the inconvenient nature of civilization's conveniences.
Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics
A surrealistic look at a family thrown onto the chopping block of modern technology.
Erica Abeel, Film Journal International
This original but overlong fable about a family menaced by industrial progress captures fears about a planet out of control.
Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com
Eases down the road from an intimate family portrait to a disturbing environmental-disaster fable with a harrowing credibility that has more depth than most apocalypses.
Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
The performers manage to overcome Meier's schematic framework-too "modern-day fairy tale" for its own good-though the director clearly knows which collaborators and elements to enlist for game-raising purposes.
Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall
Filmmaker Meier takes a clever look at family life by placing the characters in a surreal location and then twisting things outrageously
Philip French, Observer [UK]
It's a nightmare metaphor for the horrors of the modern world, but will seem like everyday reality to anyone living around Heathrow or any motorway.
David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]
A kind of anti-road movie, the first half is a genial rural snapshot but, when that bypass opens, the wheels come off and things take a turn for the surreal and boring.
David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
A deeply disconcerting provocation about the future of civilisation: a powerfully performed vision of an insignificant humanity.
Wally Hammond, Time Out
A first film of laudable ambition and Meier's directorial confidence suggests promise for the future.

Read all 20 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Anthony L

Ursula Meier just couldn't help herself, what starts as an interesting concept turns into a cliched French existential load of old nonsense. It's 2 steps forward and 1 step back all the way but to its credit it is beautifully filmed throughout.
Greg S

A French family's behavior becomes increasingly erratic when a major highway opens in their front yard; they eventually wall themselves up in the house to escape the noise. An obscure metaphor that never gets up to highway speed. NOTE: This review referes to the French film;… More
A French family's behavior becomes increasingly erratic when a major highway opens in their front yard; they eventually wall themselves up in the house to escape the noise. An obscure metaphor that never gets up to highway speed. NOTE: This review referes to the French film; Flixter currently has the cast list mixed up with a 2008 American movie of the same name.
Gordon A

Certainly scores for originality but left me a little cold with its aloof pretensions.
Walter M

"Home" is an offbeat and endearing movie that makes beautiful use out of its unique setting. Michel(Olivier Gourmet) and Marthe(Isabelle Huppert) moved to the middle of nowhere after her nervours breakdown ten years previously. A highway was built by their house but never… More
"Home" is an offbeat and endearing movie that makes beautiful use out of its unique setting. Michel(Olivier Gourmet) and Marthe(Isabelle Huppert) moved to the middle of nowhere after her nervours breakdown ten years previously. A highway was built by their house but never completed until now which breaks up their disordered existence, such as using the highway for their personal roller hockey rink. While the drivers now get a new road, the family is blocked in and can go nowhere. And sitting out in the yard to watch television has definitely lost its charm. However, it does not stop elder daughter Judith(Adelaide Leroux) from sunbathing within easy sight of the motorists. Her sister Marion(Madeleine Budd), who is scary smart but thinks too much, worries about the level of lead in the new environment, which Judith ignores as she continues smoking cigarettes. However, Marion does get to her younger brother Julien(Kacey Mottet Klein) and they both walk to the school bus which has turned into an adventure, the only one he still has as most of his playmates have vanished. The problem for all concerned is not the level of noise which is manageable but that they are being watched constantly. And just as the remote location turns out to be no permanent remedy for this family's ills, neither is the highway for the motorists since they still have to deal with the occasional traffic jam to which Judith is actually blameless.