Jane Rose’s “Heading Home” tells the story of Marie (Jenny Mundy-Castle), a young wife who is having some trouble with her reclusive husband Edward (Ean Sheehy). Edward works constantly on his “experiments”, secretive and possibly devious endeavors that he keeps guarded from his wife.
After seeing one of the byproducts of his work, Marie reaches her breaking point. Horrified, scared, and maybe a little mad herself, Marie enlists the aid of a local butcher to put a stop to Edward. A straight forward plan, in theory, but Edward’s work adds an unexpected wrinkle.
A throwback to cult classics like “Re-Animator”, or maybe a little more “Frankenhooker”, “Heading Home” runs a little over 10 minutes.
Content
The title “Heading Home” is, in fact, something of a punch line. Being a short, there is precious little time to really delve into the details of this couple and their characters. Instead, the first eight minutes of the film sets up just as many dominos as it needs to tip over in the final moments.
It’s here that this short runs into a few structural problems. The opening shot teeters dangerously close on giving away the big ending, and doesn’t seem to fit coherently with the rest of the story. It’s a POV shot, punctuated by some pretty effective sound design (one can only imagine the ADR session, which could have easily been mistaken for a number of things). This sequence is revisited throughout the short, and although we never actually see what is implied, this set up creates more questions and inconsistencies than a film of this length needs. More on that later, as it will have to contain spoilers to be discussed properly.
When we meet Marie, she is knocking on her husband’s door to let him know that the butcher has arrived. The short gets off on a bad foot here. Edward’s reaction is so over the top compared to Marie’s subdued attitude that it’s hard to get a grip on the intended tone of the piece. Edward leans right into her face, close enough to spray her as he shouts, but despite having a frame with plenty of room to do so, Marie does not back up. What this costs the film is a sense of emotional credibility. At that moment, we’re acutely aware of both actors as actors, rather than characters. The scene concludes without attaching us emotionally to either, and so the rest of the film is viewed with an odd detachment.
Just what the butcher was there to deliver, if the POV shot I’ve mentioned is any indication, is something of an enigma. What exactly is Edward using as the materials for his experiments? How does the butcher fit in? If Marie sees what I think she sees in the stairwell, where did it come from? And if she knows Edward possesses this ability, shouldn’t they have considered a different method of dispatching him?
This and other issues are, all in all, immaterial to the conclusion of the film. The whole movie is a buildup to that visual punch line, which is delivered superbly. Plot holes be damned, the last moments of “Heading Home” are something of a treat. It’s so carefully constructed, so giddily delivered, you can feel the excitement and the, for lack of a better word, LOVE that went into constructing those final moments. They’re sure to be a crowd pleaser, and will elicit loud reactions (most likely delighted laughter) from fans of the horror genre.
It’s the moments leading up to it that don’t quite hit the mark, and that’s simply a matter of point of view. In the course of ten minutes, we volley back and forth between following Marie and following Edward. What this film needs more than anything is to lose the omniscience it hands its viewer and try to tell this story from a single point of view.
