Other Worlds Review: Homebody

The last year has been a story of death and isolation, and those two experiences find a somber expression in Homebody, the Austin-made winner of the Dan O'Bannon audience award for best picture at this year's Other Worlds Film Festival.

Jordan O'Neal (co-creator of Fabletown, and last seen on the run from sinister Baptists in evangelical cult chiller Nothing But the Blood) plays the titular homebody, Guy Withers, a man convinced that he's not part of this world. It seems a lot to swallow, considering that he keeps so much to himself that no one else has a chance to explore his complaint. But he's sure, even keeping his own remains in a bag, and has created elaborate ruses to keep his transitory roommates convinced of his ongoing corporality.

Roommates? Someone has to help pay the bills. Because what happens to a ghost with no house to haunt?

Writer/director Zachary Endres conjures up a distinct version of a haunting, one with rules that are explained by exploration, not exposition. Clearly influenced by David Lowery's Ghost Story without mimicking it, he confines Guy to the house, and within its walls he is as solid as anyone else. But the doors are the limit of his universe, leaving him as an eternal shut-in with nothing to do except take in short term tenants and get his ass kicked playing online games. Only with the intervention of latest tenant Lyle (Ryan Sterling Smith), who keeps trying to drag his host out into the street before he can buckle at the knees, does there seem to be even the slightest hint of personal connection.

Driven by Nathan Felix's doomladen ambient score and the cold blue cinematography of Charlie Pearce (like an AC unit cranked down a little too low for comfort), Homebody is a chilling depiction of isolation. There's the heavy implication in O'Neal's touching but unnerving performance that Guy was a shade of a man even before his permanent removal from the outside world, and the barely suppressed despair is in every frame. There's a sickening metaphysical twist hidden in the four walls (as well as a sideways joke about not even death pushing an Austinite out of a halfway decent house), one that feeds into an extraordinary and daring closing act that redefines everything that has gone before without cheapening it. Homebody is, quite literally, haunting.

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Homebody

World premiere
Other Worlds Film Festival 2021, otherworldsfilmfest.com.