Directed by Nettie Peña
Written by Thomas Bush
Starring:
- Jake Steinfeld as Jay Jones
- Vinessa Shaw as Angel Bradley
- Peter De Paula as Mistake Bradley
- Don Edmonds as Harold Bradley
- Charles Hoyes as Wayne
- David Mielke as Scott
Rating: 
He’s not creeping in shadows or hiding behind a mask—he’s blitzed on angel dust, grinning like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, and built like he eats barbell plates for breakfast. Home Sweet Home doesn’t just arrive—it slams into the screen like a cracked-out juggernaut in denim. Directed by Nettie Peña, the elusive female editor behind the porno Dracula Sucks, this film is what happens when you mix exploitation ambition with zero budget and a gallon of chaotic energy. It promises a Thanksgiving slasher and delivers a PCP-fueled exploitation freak-out that’s more absurdist meltdown than holiday horror.
This is a seasonal slasher in name only. Thanksgiving is barely window dressing—there’s a turkey, yes, but no atmosphere, no iconography, no sense of occasion. Peña sets her massacre at a dusty ranch house in the hills of L.A., far removed from autumn chill or any Norman Rockwell imagery. Instead of a masked killer or eerie buildup, we get Jake Steinfeld—yes, Hailee Steinfeld’s uncle—whose musclebound body makes Michael Myers look like a scrawny intern. He’s not motivated by trauma or revenge or even base pleasure; he kills simply because he can, cackling through every kill like he’s the Joker’s yoked-out cousin.
The plot, if you can call it that, is pure slasher template: escaped mental patient descends on a remote family gathering and starts offing the cast. But there’s no suspense, no rhythm, no sense of dread. The kills are random, the victims even more so, and the whole thing moves with the grace of a limping goat. It feels less like a film and more like raw footage someone found in a garage and tried to edit while blindfolded. The result is anti-cinema in the most mesmerizing way possible.
Peña’s direction is pure scattershot illogicality—scenes drift in and out with no sense of narrative momentum. At times it feels like she’s parodying slasher conventions, but the delivery is so clumsy it’s hard to tell if the film’s in on its own joke. Tonal shifts are jarring, not intentional. One moment we’re trudging through standard stalk-and-slash mechanics; the next, a mime-faced guitarist in full clown mode is stomping through the house, interrupting sex scenes with ear-splitting solos and vaudeville antics. He isn’t comic relief—he’s comic sabotage.
Visually, Home Sweet Home is all flat lighting, weirdly static blocking, and clumsy cuts. It plays like softcore without the payoff—pornographic in its framing but neutered in its execution. Dialogue meanders, pacing drags, and any attempt at tension is undercut by the sheer ineptitude of its presentation. You’re not watching characters make choices—you’re watching actors wait for their cues while the camera tries to find focus.
And yet, there’s something oddly compelling in its collapse. The film doesn’t stumble into failure—it charges headlong into it with the confidence of a masterpiece. Every scene is worse than the last, which somehow makes it better. It creates a vortex of bad decisions so dense it becomes almost transcendent. For diehard exploitation freaks, there are a few gems buried in the rubble: Don Edmonds of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS infamy pops up briefly, as does Sallee Young, star of fellow Section 3 Video Nasty Demented. And in a truly surreal twist, we get the film debut of a very young Vinessa Shaw, who would later end up in Eyes Wide Shut and Hocus Pocus.
But make no mistake—these footnotes won’t redeem what is, at heart, a broken, baffling, barely coherent movie. There’s minimal gore, zero irony, and nothing that passes for suspense. Home Sweet Home isn’t scary, funny, or even particularly shocking. It’s just loud, directionless, and desperately weird—a slasher that forgets how to slash. Still, for the few of us who worship at the altar of cinematic trash, this disaster holds a strange kind of charm. It’s inept, tasteless, and totally unrepentant. Just don’t show up expecting a holiday feast. This bird’s been cooked beyond recognition—and the only thing left is the burnt, inedible carcass.
