October Horror Challenge 2019 #4: "Let's Go Home"

This movie has been floating around my Amazon recommendations for awhile now. It's billed as a horror film for younger horror fans, so that piqued my interest, since I was a young horror fan once upon a time, and I wasn't allowed to watch most horror movies,  so something like this would have been right up my alley. Some of my favorite horror movies are kid's horror films, like "Lady in White," and I'm a sucker for a scary movie for kids that's done well.

This movie is about a husband and wife who have recently moved into the husband's childhood home. They've tried unsuccessfully several times to have kids, and so they've decided to adopt. Their home seems to be haunted by bad memories more than anything else, but any thoughts of strange experiences in the house are soon brushed aside when they welcome a young boy into their family. Learning how to parent an older kid is difficult on it's own, but it's much worse when living in a creepy house where weird things keep happening. Soon it seems like the house wants to hurt them and make them miserable. Can they figure out what's happening and stop it before the evil takes over their lives completely?

I love stories where parents are trying to adopt older kids. From the time I was little, I wanted to adopt kids someday and give them the family they'd never had. That helps ground this movie, the story of two parents who want to make a family of their own. The husband and wife do seem to get snippy with each other a lot, and that makes it awkward because I kind of want to smack them both. They both seem to genuinely love their kid once he comes, though, and that helps make them more likeable.  I also like how they both act like such good parents to their kid. They fall apart a bit along the way, but eventually they do come together to try and do the right thing. That sense of family fighting for each other makes the movie work. It's definitely not perfect, but I ended up liking it. It's more sad than scary, but I can imagine watching it with kids as an easy way to introduce them to horror movies.