Writer and Director: Sebastian Godwin
Taking your new wife to meet your children is a family saga fraught with trauma but with Richard’s teenage family it becomes a trial of endurance for Hollie who is dragged into an unnerving dynamic in Sebastian Godwin’s new film. Homebound, available in cinemas before a digital released later in April, is a domestic drama with horror influences. This 70-minute story is intriguingly filmed to reflect Hollie’s increasing disorientation.
Having not seen his children for some time, Richard returns for his youngest daughter’s birthday and while he introduces Hollie, they decide to conceal their marriage. With their mother, Nina, out of the house and not answering her phone, something is not quite right and when the eldest children react badly to Hollie, her pleas to leave go unanswered.
Godwin’s film may employ horror tropes – a lonely country house, distorting camerawork and a mysterious locked room – but it is primarily a story about toxicity. The whereabouts of the missing mother becomes almost incidental to the growing unease caused initially by the silently hostility of the children whose feral independence is cold and unwelcoming.
But over time it is Richard’s behaviour that really causes concern. First, the shameless kissing and manhandling of his young wife in front of the children, later his blithe acceptance of the violent children’s games that frighten Hollie. Godwin slowly refocuses Homebound on this father and husband, the distortion seeming to emerge from his influence and presence.
As Hollie, Aisling Loftus, is suitably overwhelmed by the events of the house, trying to please, even to fit in but continuing to feel like an outsider, even a persecuted one. Tom Goodman-Hill moves from genial decent parent to entitled patriarch influenced, perhaps even becoming absorbed by the house and allowing his family played by Raffiella Chapman, Hattie Gotobed and Lukas Rolfe to behave as they like.
Godwin’s approach is reminiscent of Rory O’Hara’s The Nest that had a similar tone and stylistic approach, and it is a shame that some of that atmosphere is lost in a too literal ending which comes almost too quickly to round off the 70-minutes. But Homebound is an interesting and experimental approach to darker family dynamics.
Blue Finch Film Releasing presents Homebound in cinemas 1 April and on digital 4 April.
