Hard Home movie review

MOVIE TITLE: Hard Home

This revenge-thriller is now playing on Amazon Prime Video.

RATING: R

LENGTH: 1 hour 27 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: C

IN A NUTSHELL:

The story is about a mother who is determined to kill the serial killer who murdered her daughter. As an engineer, she turns her high-tech home into a trap for the killer, initiating a deadly cat-and-mouse game where every move can be fatal.

The film was directed by James Bamford. Screenwriting credits go to Mark Shea Price.

THINGS I LIKED:

Simone Kessell looks great and has the fierce stamina to pull this off.. You might recognize her from YellowJackets.
Other cast members include Joseph Millson, Rachel Adedeji, Rosie Day, and, of course, Andrew Howard who plays a complete monster of a man.
There is a lot of action.
If you enjoy figuring out puzzles, you might enjoy the sleuthing that the mother does to better identify the killer and find out how to torture him to get vengeance.
I generally like vigilante justice movies where people take solving a crime into their own hands.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

Some things didn’t quite make sense. For example, the mom is smart enough to build an entire house with fancy gadgets designed to torture the bad guy and she decides to fight him in hand-to-hand combat?
Wow, this lady sure has a lot of time and money on her hands. Jiao, the nosy neighbor seems to have a lot of spare time too.
The timeline bounces back and forth, which might confuse some viewers.
The movie’s description says the mother is saddened…a better description is that she’s obsessed and unhinged.
There is tension but the writing just isn’t that good.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Profanity, including F-bombs
A lot of Spanish is spoken without subtitles. It basically is variations of the same thing said over and over: “This is what you are: a devil, exactly like your father, a monster.”
We see some dead, charred bodies and cut off tongues (super gross)
People fight
Gruesome torture
Bloody violence