Rebirth: Home Sweet Home (2025) Review
This supernatural action horror based on the hit video-game franchise is off-the-wall madness. American cop Jake, who whilst on holiday with his family in Thailand, is thrust into a supernatural world after interrupting a mass murderer’s ritual that opens the Gates of Hell.
When demons escape, possessing people on the streets, the city is thrown into chaos. To save the city, and his trapped family, Jake must ally himself with a mysterious Novice Monk and embark on a journey through the supernatural world of The Hindrance to shut the Gates of Hell.
REBIRTH: HOME SWEET HOME is directed by Alexander Kiesl and Steffen Hacker (BEYOND BELIEF: FACT OR FICTION) and is based on a 2017 videogame that draws on Thai folklore for its horror elements. It’s a survival game that sees the player attempting to evade evil spirits, after waking up in the middle of nowhere, and find their way back to the ‘home sweet home’ of the title. In a nutshell that’s what this film is exactly about so in that respect it is successful in transferring the basic concept to the screen.
As to whether this film matches the thrills and spills that the game franchise offers is not known to me, given that I am not a gamer, but what I can say is this. It’s a muddled affair that moves at a zippy pace and that the visual effects work will unfortunately not appease some viewers, I am talking about those only used to more impressive visual effects work in larger budgeted movies. For me, the effects work was fine, it adds the charm of this videogame adaptation. It can tend to be exposition-heavy but with demonic possessions aplenty, much running around and scrapping and shooting, it is far from dull. It’s rough and ready and often confused but it hit the spot nicely for the short while it played.
REBIRTH: HOME SWEET HOME is available on Digital Platforms 14 April and DVD & Blu-ray 21 April. Distributed by Signature Entertainment
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