The Hamiltons

The Hamiltons (2006): There was an old Sesame Street song called ‘It Ain’t Easy Being Green” that would seem to apply to the Hamilton family as depicted in this movie. However, you need to substitute ‘a normal middle class family’ for ‘green’ to validate the comparison. You see, while the Hamiltons appear normal on the surface, they do have some rather unsavory family practices that make it hard for them to fit into suburbia forcing them to move around a lot. Told from the perspective of the high school age son, it turns out that their parents have died and his oldest brother is trying to keep the family together under some rather unusual circumstances. The post high school age twins are of little help, he being a semi-employed underachiever and his sister a Goth girl without much redeeming charm. They also have a younger brother who is locked up in the barn, never seen but growls a lot and appears to be very hungry.

The high school teen is having problems in school and clearly is not happy with the way his family behaves. This negative reinforcing behavior includes kidnapping people and hanging them from the rafters in the barn where they eventually disappear. Initially, you are not shown exactly what happens to these poor folks but you can tell ‘it ain’t normal’. The oldest son has meetings with a social worker trying to work out their problems and one is constantly wondering what the herpies is really going on. Suffice it to say; it turns out this is really a coming of age movie as the teen boy has tackled his puberty problems head on by the end of the movie. A low budget indie production, this movie, while not great, shows a lot of talent in looking at a new angle to an old horror genre. Recommended for fans of horror movies but normal folks should probably pass on this one. The movie is rated R for: brief breastulations, involuntary blood donations, massive hanging around, multiple elbows to the head, dead social workers, dead students and especially for letting the youngest son out of the box early.