As the Lunar New Year approaches, The MacMahonian enters the filmic new year proper, with the first review of a 2015 release (actually, not yet released, circumstance made possible by the, ahem, proclivities of globalization and information technology).
Home Sweet Hell is the 2nd feature film by Anthony Burns, whose name and previous feature Skateland(2010) are unbeknownst to The MacMahonian.
Home Sweet Hell tells the story of Don Champagne (Patrick Wilson) a furniture salesman married to control freak soccer mom Mona Champagne (Katherine Heigl). To let off steam, Don gets involved with newly recruited company employee and gold digger-you-could-spot-a-mile-away Dusty (Jordana Brewster). After becoming pregnant, Dusty starts blackmailing Don and eventually Mona becomes hip to the situation, effortlessly morphing from control freak soccer mom to willing and able serial killer in a basic instinct drive to protect her family's reputation : “I can't have you father a bastard! I can put the children through that! What would the neighbours say?”
There are few things that sadden The MacMahonian more than a good black comedy script gone to waste. Good points (namely the Champagne family name, sex-comedy-turns-splatter-horror plot twist, ever haunting in-laws presumable culprits of Mona's psychosis) and good performances, foremost Heigl's, notwithstanding, Hell is at the level where film criticism tends to stoop to being prescriptive, as in: dialogue could have done with polishing out superfluous histrionics, but to little avail, as direction is dismally bland and the latent perversity of the project never goes beyond the press kit.
So the year has started. At least they didn’t save it for release in Halloween.