Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Home Sweet Hell Blu-ray Movie Review

Better the devil you know...

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 25, 2015

Marriage shouldn't be a tricky thing, but when the honeymoon wears off and the kids are screaming all day and keeping up with the Joneses means keeping a tight budget and tighter zippers, cloud nine can transform into a minefield of dueling personalities, unfulfilled needs, resentment, untruths, and hatred underneath the façade of the perfect suburban life. At best, a bad marriage goes through the motions. At worst, truths come to light that can be...deadly! Home Sweet Hell peeks into the imperfect world behind the perfect postcard depiction of suburban life in a film that's sort of like the poor man's American Beauty. It's a film without the charm, character, or depth of Sam Mendes' masterpiece, opting instead for tomfoolery and a fully superficial story that wants to be more but gets the tone all wrong. Is it a Comedy? Satire? Dark Drama? All of the above? Director Anthony Burns' (Skateland) film is technically proficient and entertaining in spurts, but it leaves audiences wondering just what it wanted to be, what it wanted viewers to get out of the experience, and how it could have rearranged and reinvented itself to be something more than a confused shell of a movie with unrealized potential oozing as freely as the blood flows in the film's meatiest (literally) scenes.

Living dangerously.

Don Champagne (Patrick Wilson) leads the perfect suburban Life: beautiful home, beautiful wife, two great kids, and he owns a booming furniture business. But behind the façade is a darker reality. His wife Mona (Katherine Heigl) isn't exactly mom of the year. She lives only to further the façade, to put the best foot forward in the family's public dealings, to keep the best house on the block and keep her family in line with her plans for outdoing everyone else. She's mapped out their life -- what they will buy and when and even when she'll sleep with her husband -- and Don isn't happy. He wants to be close to her but she pushes him away for the sake of the schedule. He finds comfort in new hire Dusty (Jordana Brewster), a spunky, sexy little thing that quickly works Don into a frenzy and works her way into his bed. But she's out for more than a quickie, and the couple's little side escapade quickly blows up into hell on earth for all involved.

Katherine Heigl puts her best foot forward in her portrayal of the unstable Mona, a perfectionist who so ardently favors and covets her magazine-cover suburban life -- and all the little ticks that make it run like a well-oiled machine -- that she treats her husband as, at best, an object, and, at worst, a means to an end, a piece of the puzzle, a necessary evil in the picture of her storybook life. But underneath the sweet, well-meaning exterior -- an exterior that Don still loves, even if he's fallen out of love thanks to her robotic, distant ways -- is a devil of a woman who will do what she must to get what she wants, even if it means alienating her husband, never mind the lengths to which she'll go if he allows outside trouble in. On the other side is Dusty, who fills that void of intimacy in Don's life but who, like Mona, is only using him as part of a larger scheme. Neither one really seems to care about him as a person, only as a tool to benefit from his precarious position, sandwiched between two things he needs but neither of which he really wants, at least not as presented. Patrick Wilson plays that complicated middle ground well. He convinces in every area: his displeasure with his marriage, his initial reluctance to pursue Dusty, his emotional upheaval at everything that follows. In between the tugging extremes is the only real human being amongst the trio of leads, "human being" defined as someone who is capable of feeling and living beyond a narrow field of view and someone who feels emotion outside of that which he wants most, which seems to be the best of Mona and the best of Dusty rolled into one. He, too, then, is looking for the perfect life, but he's aware enough to know that that's not easy to find and smart enough to know that he can't stoop too low to get it. Despite this tasty buffet of characterization and room for growth, the film chooses to take the easy road and play it out mostly on the superficial level, hinting at what is a massive amount of depth underneath but choosing to forego a more satisfying journey in favor of a rather limp, easy tale.

Home Sweet Hell wades through its story with a tangible unease as it struggles to decide if it's a dark comedy, a serious drama, or something in between. It certainly favors the former in terms of basic storyline premises and the contrast of cheerful, colorful suburbia against the darker linings underneath. At the same time it wades through dark, difficult territories of infidelity, extortion, and murder. The problem isn't the blend of light and dark, the problem is the unease with which they're meshed and the timidity on both ends. The movie takes a lot of ideas -- even if they're not all that novel -- but seems afraid to push the envelope with them, seeming content to simply push, but not shove, to share, but not shape, to tease, but not go all the way. That's not to say the movie doesn't work because it needs more blood. What it needs is a tighter direction, better defined characters, a reason to care. The film features no real likable main characters and trusts the audience to become engaged with the film anyway, based more on wit and charm than any serious exploration of manipulation or the true, deep consequences of dark solutions to dire problems. Ultimatley, it winds up playing like most any other cookie-cutter "edgy" RomComDram that prefers the ease of commercial appeal rather than the effort of dramatic fortitude.

Home Sweet Hell Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Home Sweet Hell features a rich and vibrant 1080p transfer. The image offers a robust, sparkling color palette that's diverse and well defined, pushing a hair warm -- evident largely in skin tones -- but revealing a myriad of picture-perfect hues on clothes and particularly out and around the Champagne home where lush vegetation grows healthily and colorfully. Details are razor sharp and pleasant, whether skin and clothing features, furniture in the store, that same exterior garden, or the grungier trailer home that plays key in a few scenes. Black levels are generally deep and rich but go a little too pale in spots. The image doesn't struggle with any noticeable bouts of aliasing, banding, blockiness, or excess noise. Overall, this is a wonderful 1080p transfer from Sony.

Home Sweet Hell Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Home Sweet Hell offers a good, nicely balanced, and well defined DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The movie features a wide variety of music, including a nicely detailed and full-staged opening title score, more aggressive beats during Don's workout and sex montage, and mildly muddy but realistic background strip club beats in chapter 12. The track springs to life with many little examples of healthy environmental ambience, whether background elevator music in the furniture store, the mild din of a backyard party, or falling rain and rolling thunder. There aren't any exceptionally heavy sound effects; a few gunshots late in the film play with suitable, but not substantial, presence and authority. Dialogue is rich in delivery and clear and efficient in its center-channel delivery.

Home Sweet Hell Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Home Sweet Hell contains deleted scenes, outtakes, a making-of, and a fictional commercial centering on one of the film's characters.

• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Above the Ground Parking Structure (3:55), Don Versus the Treadmill (1:18), Enrolling in Rehab (2:32), You Can Always Adopt (0:48), Terrible Idea (0:56), Watching You Like a Hawk (1:37), This Is Your Problem, Now Fix It (2:27), The Dream (3:44), and They All Hate Us (1:24).
• Outtakes (1080p, 6:04).
• Champagne Furniture & Rugs Commercial (1080p, 0:43): One of Don's commercials.
• Suburban Butchery: Making Home Sweet Hell (1080p, 10:02): Cast and crew look at basic story details, the film's tone, the balance between story and budget, and characters and performances.
• Previews (1080p): Additional Sony titles.

Home Sweet Hell Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Home Sweet Hell is brimming with potential but flounders to the point of near irrelevancy as a transparent Romantic Comedy/Drama/light Horror film that takes the dangers of a singular life focus to the extreme. It's too uneven for its own good, buoyant and cheery contrasted with edgy and dark and violent, resulting in a movie that feels like it's trying too hard and doesn't ever find a more approachable middle ground that more fully explores the true depths that define the characters. Still, it works well enough as largely mindless entertainment, even considering some pacing issues. Sony's Blu-ray release of Home Sweet Hell features stellar video, strong audio, and a few supplements. Rent it.