I'm At Home
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Philip Thompson
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, surreal
The host of a handmade children's TV show begins to crack under the daily demand to be charming. Forced whimsy becomes its own kind of horror.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Kids' TV host having a breakdown is becoming its own micro-genre, and most of them are too cute to land. Thompson apparently isn't afraid of the extremes, which is the only reason to make this film at all.
Weaponizing soft handmade kids'-TV aesthetics against itself — Hertzfeldt's Rejected register meeting the Mr.-Rogers-as-private-hell mode is a sharp, dangerous formal gesture.
Weaponizing the aesthetic of soft hand-crafted kids' programming against itself — felt and construction paper as the wallpaper of a breakdown. The Hertzfeldt 'Rejected' lineage is the exact right pitch.