The X Files - Home
**½ / ****
I think if I had watched Home back when it first came on television (by the fourth season, in 1996, I was working the night shift and often busy so I was watching the series sporadically), its impact would have been more potent, but I have been through a number of inbred killer horror flicks since then (the Hills Have Eyes / Wrong Turn movies have exploited this to death and reduced it to parody at this point) so my feelings of the episode aren’t as quick to laud its audacity and shock value. At the time, if you hadn’t seen Craven’s film back in 1977, there wasn’t a great deal of content focused on folks that “kept it in the family” and remained off to themselves. Obviously The Texas Chainsaw Massacre also comes to mind; how could this film not, really? But despite the hubbub of the time regarding its gruesome nature (and “warning” to viewers who might watch it), horror fans who have seen their share of Rob Zombie movies followed many other practitioners of gory, visceral violence since ’96 will consider Home a rather tame experience. The content still maintains its potency in regards to the use of a Johnny Mathis song when the Brothers Peacock head out in their aging jalopy (a fine-looking car but one that been worked on quite a bit since its finer days) to the sheriff’s house to kill him and the missus when they feel threatened by his willingness to arrest them for a little infant found buried in the ground outside the fence of their farmhouse and rural estate. And the hint of further incest as the Mathis song whistles its tune into the night as one last male member of the family leaves the comfort of his car’s trunk spending some “intimate time with mama” not long after fleeing their former residence due to Mulder and Scully’s intrusion with guns and protective vests. Too bad the sheriff’s deputy also fares none too well against the family with his failure to exercise caution entering through their front door, with his head taken off almost immediately during the process. Mulder and Scully decide to take the “free the pigs from their trough” approach to gain advantage, finding the matriarch of the Peacock clan perfectly content to stay under bed with no legs and little cleanliness. Mama Peacock likes her life just the way it is. I think the episode really hits the mark when Mulder and Scully investigate the home and find old photos of the family, realizing at some point, before all the inbreeding, that there was a seeming normalcy, later abandoned as the outside “civilized life” was rejected in favor of remaining within their own (very) close knit family. The first scene infant birth and burial and Mulder/Scully investigating the location of the removal of the child is particularly disconcerting. The sheriff’s depressive realization that the complexities and technological advancements of the outside world would soon encroach upon his old town’s simple way of life surrendering to the darkness of an even more primitive lifestyle (the Peacocks feel as if they are about to be encroached, responding with violence instead of sighs and disappointment) has its irony as well. Mulder telling Scully he might like to settle outside of the city and embrace such a simpler locale at some point in his life, and the recognition by Mulder that Scully might make a good mother (talking about the infant she investigates) serve as character revelations I personally mark as valuable, while the gruesome subject matter often overshadows these aspects of Home. I must admit that I consider the high praise as an essential episode of the series by many critics / fans of the show quite surprising. For me, it is okay if familiar. I can only imagine this episode could be jarring if coming out of the emotionally charged two part "colonization/clone/X dies/Mulder's mom is in a coma" episode arc that ended the third season and began the fourth season.
I think if I had watched Home back when it first came on television (by the fourth season, in 1996, I was working the night shift and often busy so I was watching the series sporadically), its impact would have been more potent, but I have been through a number of inbred killer horror flicks since then (the Hills Have Eyes / Wrong Turn movies have exploited this to death and reduced it to parody at this point) so my feelings of the episode aren’t as quick to laud its audacity and shock value. At the time, if you hadn’t seen Craven’s film back in 1977, there wasn’t a great deal of content focused on folks that “kept it in the family” and remained off to themselves. Obviously The Texas Chainsaw Massacre also comes to mind; how could this film not, really? But despite the hubbub of the time regarding its gruesome nature (and “warning” to viewers who might watch it), horror fans who have seen their share of Rob Zombie movies followed many other practitioners of gory, visceral violence since ’96 will consider Home a rather tame experience. The content still maintains its potency in regards to the use of a Johnny Mathis song when the Brothers Peacock head out in their aging jalopy (a fine-looking car but one that been worked on quite a bit since its finer days) to the sheriff’s house to kill him and the missus when they feel threatened by his willingness to arrest them for a little infant found buried in the ground outside the fence of their farmhouse and rural estate. And the hint of further incest as the Mathis song whistles its tune into the night as one last male member of the family leaves the comfort of his car’s trunk spending some “intimate time with mama” not long after fleeing their former residence due to Mulder and Scully’s intrusion with guns and protective vests. Too bad the sheriff’s deputy also fares none too well against the family with his failure to exercise caution entering through their front door, with his head taken off almost immediately during the process. Mulder and Scully decide to take the “free the pigs from their trough” approach to gain advantage, finding the matriarch of the Peacock clan perfectly content to stay under bed with no legs and little cleanliness. Mama Peacock likes her life just the way it is. I think the episode really hits the mark when Mulder and Scully investigate the home and find old photos of the family, realizing at some point, before all the inbreeding, that there was a seeming normalcy, later abandoned as the outside “civilized life” was rejected in favor of remaining within their own (very) close knit family. The first scene infant birth and burial and Mulder/Scully investigating the location of the removal of the child is particularly disconcerting. The sheriff’s depressive realization that the complexities and technological advancements of the outside world would soon encroach upon his old town’s simple way of life surrendering to the darkness of an even more primitive lifestyle (the Peacocks feel as if they are about to be encroached, responding with violence instead of sighs and disappointment) has its irony as well. Mulder telling Scully he might like to settle outside of the city and embrace such a simpler locale at some point in his life, and the recognition by Mulder that Scully might make a good mother (talking about the infant she investigates) serve as character revelations I personally mark as valuable, while the gruesome subject matter often overshadows these aspects of Home. I must admit that I consider the high praise as an essential episode of the series by many critics / fans of the show quite surprising. For me, it is okay if familiar. I can only imagine this episode could be jarring if coming out of the emotionally charged two part "colonization/clone/X dies/Mulder's mom is in a coma" episode arc that ended the third season and began the fourth season.
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