The Horror Show
Come Back to Me
by Paul Leyden
Home invasion horror flicks are a tiring subgenre. While there are few notable examples, my personal favorite being You’re Next. Sadly, one critical flaw is that home invasion movies are almost always grounded in reality, preventing them from being vastly different from one another. Come Back to Me is another such home invasion movie. I expected it to be a re-hash of every other film in the subgenre, but it has an interesting twist that breathes life back into home invasions.
Sarah and Josh are living together just outside of Vegas. Sarah is a grad student working on her dissertation about pornography, and Josh is a casino dealer. A kid, Dale, moves into the neighborhood. The couple introduces themselves to Dale by bringing him cookies. However, he prefers homemade cookies but gladly accepts them anyways. Around this time, Sarah begins having night terrors but wakes with no recollection as to what happened. Josh and Sarah take a weeklong night terror-less vacation. When she returns Dale is upset that she was gone for an entire week. Suspecting something strange, she breaks into Dale’s house and finds strange photographs of a woman’s face and a bunch of house keys including her own. Dale catches her and strikes her with a hammer. She then wakes up in her own home. Shortly after, she learns that she is pregnant and, little does she know, Josh is infertile. Terrified, she installs a security camera that is disguised as a smoke alarm. Nothing would have prepared her for what the footage had in store.
Alright, I’ll be the first to admit that this movie isn’t great but it’s not bad either. It starts off very slow and predictable. It doesn’t seem like the movie tries to pull any punches. You know from the beginning that it’s Dale breaking into her house. I feel like thy tried to misdirect the audience a little bit but didn’t try very hard. Once, Sarah breaks into Dale’s house there is no question about whether or not he was responsible. Little did I know it was all a front, I thought I knew what was going on but I was tricked. It takes a supernatural turn, so unless you want to know, skip to the next paragraph, spoiler alert! He has the ability to bring people back to life. I thought I had it all figured out, drugs or ptsd were clearly responsible. It was actually quite clever, they didn’t try to create a plot twist by revealing the killer to be someone else. It was exactly who you’d expect but how he was getting away with it was the twist.
My biggest concern in the beginning was that no one else seemed to think Dale was creepy until about halfway through the movie. I mean, in movies the creepy guy always has un-brushed greasy shoulder length hair. The first sign was that he was upset because Sarah didn’t bring him homemade cookies. Secondly, at the grocery store he offers to carry Sarah’s groceries for her and he’s not even the cashier helping her. Third, he takes her keys to open her car for her. Fourth, he walks away with her keys conveniently, for that matter, how did he take her house key off the chain without her knowing that her house key was missing? Doesn’t she have to get into her house using her house key? Fifth, he finishes the entire plate of cookies in a day to bring the tray back to her just to see her again. It’s not until Dale is upset with her for being gone for a week, that she finds him creepy. Did I mention all the creepy things that I listed happened in one day? Or at least it seemed like a day in movie time.
Come Back to Me relies too heavily on convenient plot devices as a crutch to tell the story. It opens with a scene that is separate from the rest of the movie that just serves the purpose of setting up the movie and to let everyone else know it’s a horror movie. People die and stuff, they hint slightly at the future of the movie but without context you wouldn’t figure it out. The introduction of Dale’s mother later on just serves to explain what’s going on to those who haven’t already figured it out. Then she throws in a last minute, “BTW I know where you can get a gun.” It was just a quick deus ex machina just to give Sarah an edge.
I’m just going to briefly dive into the ending. I gave away too many spoilers earlier so I will try to do this as spoiler free as possible. Remember that movie The Mist and how it had that super depressing and dark ending where the hero doesn’t really win? Come Back to Me kind of has an ending like that. Granted it’s not nearly as dark and depressing as the former movie. I would guess that’s because you never really care for the characters. I mean they develop over the course of the movie but in a sitcom kind of way. Things are okay between Sarah and Josh, then things aren’t, and finally they are again. That kind of writing prevents you from ever caring for these characters, so when things go poorly you’re un-phased. However, dark endings are refreshing because they break away from the norm. Typically viewers imagine this Hollywood ending where everything will be okay and you prepare yourself for that. Alas, when they don’t, they don’t sit well with the viewer because it wasn’t anticipated. That’s what makes a good ending.
This movie wasn’t perfect, but I actually enjoyed watching it. A lot of movies feel like chores that have to be tackled and Come Back to Me didn’t feel like that. I got on the ride and enjoyed it. Would I ride it again? Probably not. This isn’t a film that will be remembered as a classic that won’t be forgotten years from now, but it’s a good watch. Both the plot twist and the ending were quite refreshing compared to the stale narrative framework that makes up the rest of this movie. A lot the actors were pseudo-somebodies, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who the actors were. I thought the bartender was the pilot from Firefly, I was wrong. The husband looked like somebody too, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The only recognizable person was Katie Walder, I’m not sure where I saw her before but I think it was probably How I Met Your Mother, I can’t be certain. The overall performances weren’t great but I’ve seen worse. This marks the feature length directorial debut for actor Paul Leyden. It was an okay start, I can’t say I’m looking forward to what he has planned next but I’ll keep the information stored for later. I just can’t help but wonder what made him choose this film. It’s hard imagining someone being like “Come Back to Me, this will be the film I will mark my feature length directorial debut with! I won’t be forgotten in the years to come!” It was just pretty okay. At least he was able to briefly revive what I considered a relatively dead subgenre.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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