Home | Bookmark

Featured: Love SMS, TVS Wego, TVS Jive, Bajaj Pulsar 135, Shilpa Shetty Wedding Photos

Sign in | Sign up

  Find:  

A few months after graduating from high school, small-town football hero Mike Donaldson (Matt Long) returns from his new life at Northwestern University for the Homecoming retirement of his old jersey. While he's moved on to bigger and better things -- including a new girlfriend, Elizabeth (Jessica Stroup), whom he brings home to meet the folks -- life in town remains stagnant. His cousin Billy (Michael Landes) is still a cop and doesn't think that Mike realizes how good he has it, especially when it comes to Mike's ex, Shelby (Mischa Barton), who still runs the local bowling alley.

 

Although Mike assures Elizabeth that she has nothing to worry about regarding Shelby, he's surprised to learn that Shelby thought that their breakup was just a temporary solution to his going away to college. Aw-kward. Tensions cool, though, when Shelby plasters on a faux smile and welcomes Elizabeth by plying her with alcohol, knowing that she'll be drunk when it comes time to meet Mike's parents. Realizing her predicament, Elizabeth opts to spend the night in a motel to dry out.

 

Through a series of unlikely circumstances, however, Elizabeth finds herself hoofing it down a deserted road later that night, suitcase in tow. Shelby happens to drive by, and by "by" I mean "accidentally runs over Elizabeth." Panicked, Shelby takes her unconscious rival to her house and hooks her up with all of the painkillers her ill mother had taken before her death a few months earlier.

 

Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game between the two young women, as Shelby uses the situation to her advantage by prolonging Elizabeth's capitivity and trying to make Mike believe that she's dumped him, while Elizabeth tries simply to survive and escape her newfound prison.

Homecoming is a well-conceived concept. It has a bit of a Kathy Bates, Misery flavor, with a Glenn Close Fatal Attraction persona in the Mischa Barton’s Shelby. Unfortunately, the presentation of the Morgan J. Freeman film was lacking.

 

Homecoming is anything but original. Its by-the-numbers thriller plot starts out Fatal Attraction and ends up Misery, down to an obligatory "hobbling"-esque scene in which Shelby lays the smack down on Elizabeth for attempting to escape. It's predictable with a thoroughly underwhelming (and borderline ridiculous) climax.

 

There are some cheesy moments spread throughout the film as well, which really gets in the way of your ability to take the suspenseful nature of the movie seriously. There is some promise in the plot and the potential for suspense and solid drama are always in the background, but there are too many unbelievable elements and flawed acting moments for the viewer to get truly sucked into the story.

 

 

 

What could be a group of flat, thriller-standard caricatures ends up the subject of an involving character study of four people with divergent goals whose lives intertwine under tragic circumstances.

 

The direction is engaging but lacks real thrills or scares. Overall plot is shamelessly derivative, but the characters are well rounded and intriguing. A solid, professional cast delivers at a level higher than the plot achieves. A movie built on a wholly preposterous set-up - but without that set-up, there'd be no movie. And that's not to mention the numerous implausibilities that follow.

There’s a hint of a subtext about class conflict and the travails of the rural working class that threatens to make things more interesting here and there, but it never breaks through—as if one of those scriptwriters introduced the idea only to be vetoed by the other two. Mostly, HOMECOMING goes through the motions as if expecting that only newcomers to the psychothriller genre would be watching it—topped off by a final “scare” suggesting its creators were counting on that.

 

The end result is solidly entertaining in a TV movie-of-the-week sort of way, told at a brisk pace with nice production value -- even if you know where it's going the entire time. Overall a good but not great film that you may find entertaining. To make matters worse, the 100-minute film feels as long as the line at the supermarket when you're famished. Stay home.