Watch Home Invasion here!The first project I ever directed! Spoilers ahead!This was the same summer I graduated high school. Zero budget production but I’m proud of it. Although even if I did have a budget at 19 years old I wouldn’t have know what to do with it. If I had to remake this today with a few hundred dollars all that would change is the lighting, camera, and definitely write an actual script instead of just dictating the story beat by beat while shooting. I do think the improv element adds to some of the comedy though. I think it would also be fun to shoot this entirely different. Really lean in to a parody of a thriller. Shoot this in the style of Panic Room perhaps. Every so often I’ll rewatch it and still laugh. A lot of the humor and dialogue still lands for me. The premise is ridiculous, sure, but the concept is still funny for me. My biggest regret with the payoff at the end for me is that the punchline feels a little too specific to the time. Fidget spinners were an insane fad during the final years of the 2010’s and committing to the bit with them was funny at the time but I’m not sure how well it’s aged or if someone today would even get it. It’s like if someone in the late 90s made this with Furbies. Every once in a while though, I’ll see someone playing with a fidget spinner and it’ll make my day cause it’ll remind me of this. I also genuinely love a handful of the shots; the close ups of the peephole, the shot/reverse shot of the robber opening the door, the little windmill in the backyard, the medium wide of the robbers in the car at the end (which by the way was my old Nissan Maxima, my first car! 🥲)
