‘Hellcome Home’ review: It gets better

The most important thing to bear in mind when watching Bobby Bonifacio’s Hellcome Home is that it gets better.

Lackluster and unimaginative opening

Hellcome Home opens in the most lackluster and unimaginative way.

A family man (Dennis Trillo) just returned from Guam to enjoy the fruit of his labor — a seemingly quaint house in the province that he got for a bargain. As with most second-hand houses bought for an unbelievable price, his future family home bears glaring flaws that during his first few days living there would start manifesting. As it turns out, the house isn’t just riddled with the ghosts of those who used to live there, it is also the home of a maleficent being that feasts on dark emotions harbored deep beneath supposedly strong family bonds.

Sadly, Bonifacio welcomes his audience to his gore-filled vision of the Filipino family being plagued from within with a very tedious set-up that doesn’t echo the extent of the madness he has in store.

Initially, the scares are tame. Wraiths appear in the corners of the frame. Children acting eerily strange. Mysterious old men trespassing on the property. Drunkards talking about ritual offerings. Farmers chanting ominously. Bonifacio packs his set-up with everything he can muster to put his audience in a state of constant suspicion. The problem clearly of the film isn’t that there are too many cooks in the kitchen but that there are too many ingredients in the meal. Everything feels a tad too haphazard.

Model house

As mentioned, things get better. As soon as the inelegant set-up is out of the way and the film steps into a territory where Bonifacio can flex his creativity unhindered by the expectations of formula, it becomes more twisted and strangely, more meaningful. 

From the present, Hellcome Home plunges into the past to tell the story of the house’s previous residents who also consist of a family man (Raymond Bagatsing) and his family. Recently relocated in the model house of the subdivision he is selling as a real estate broker, little does he know that his family will be victimized by an evil spirit that will take advantage of their growing insecurities.

The film takes a more compelling shape. 

It is now anchored on a definite period, with Bonifacio peppering the episode with details from the 90’s, from the hit television shows whose punchlines make an appearance in some of the scares to the social concerns that pervade the decade such as farmlands being quickly developed into middle-class housing. The characters are also more fleshed out, with the individual family members having their own frailties to wrestle with. More importantly, Bonifacio seems more restrained in his storytelling, all leading to that episode’s violence-filled climax that feels deliberate and earned.

Doesn’t end as prettily

Hellcome Home doesn’t end as prettily. 

The film’s final third is riddled with exposition. Bonifacio feels the need to exhaust all explanations for his clever twists and turns. Thankfully, after all the revelations, the film again proceeds towards a zany finale that has its characters commit to all manners of insanity all for the sake of survival. It gets quite deranged which is surprisingly very satisfying.

Hellcome Home is far from being a perfect horror. It is however fun most specially when it finally gets demented and ferocious. — Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ Tirad Pass.

Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema.