The Home (2025) is a chilling psychological horror that fuses mystery, paranoia, and biting social commentary into a narrative that keeps audiences perpetually unsure of what is real. At its center is Max, a volatile young man weighed down by grief, simmering anger, and a past scarred by reckless choices. When those choices finally corner him, prison is spared—but at a price: community service at Green Meadows, a retirement home that appears ordinary yet hums with quiet unease.
From the moment Max arrives, subtle oddities begin to gnaw at him—cryptic residents, muffled sounds echoing through the halls at night, and the home’s rigid prohibitions on restricted wings that seem to hide something unspeakable. His fragile bond with Norma, one of the older residents, only deepens the mystery, pulling him closer to secrets the institution seems desperate to conceal. As Max digs deeper, he becomes trapped in a spiral of hallucinations, whispered warnings, and the terrifying suspicion that his placement at Green Meadows was never punishment, but design.
This article contains spoilers.
The Home (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with Max listening to the TV news about an impending storm. In a flashback, we see a young Max growing up with foster parents and siblings. Among the siblings, Max is close to Luke. Soon, Luke leaves for college, and Max is upset. However, Luke reminds Max that they are thicker than blood. Currently, Max breaks into a place and sprays paint on it. In another flashback, we see Max’s foster parents informing Max that his brother Luke passed away (suicide) because he was having problems in college. Currently, Max escapes serving jail time due to his father, who pulled some strings.
However, Max needs to complete community service at Green Meadows, a retirement home. Even though Max does not want to do it, he has no other choice. At the retirement home, Juno and Les give Max instructions. The key given to Max opens all doors except for a few hallways in the basement. The fourth floor is off-limits, as those patients there require special care. Lastly, Max should enter residential apartments only if necessary. The job begins immediately, and as Max pulls the cleaning cart, a muscular face pops up, scaring Max. During the cleaning job, Max notices two people in masks having sex. So, Max leaves the room without cleaning the trash.
What does Max find on the fourth floor?
Near the pool, Max gets acquainted with Norma, who is kind to Max. That night, Max is unable to sleep as he hears someone screaming his name. The next morning, Lou and another woman wake Max up, saying he needs to clean someone’s faecal matter. When Max gets to the room, it is actually a welcome party for Max. At the party, a woman paints a picture of the group. However, the woman puts blobs on every face, making Max feel weird about it. The doctor on staff, D.W. Sabian, introduces himself. Furthermore, Sabian says he lost his father, and the older man was all alone, so he tries to help the old folks: that night, Max dreams of the masked woman stabbing him. However, Max wakes up because he hears a scream and gets out of his room.
Outside, Max meets Norma, who is also having trouble sleeping. So, Norma invites Max inside her room. There, Max sees a trinket and finds it familiar. The trinket belongs to Esther, Norma’s friend in the retirement home. There is a half-finished painting that piques Max’s curiosity, so Norma says it was made by her son, Jacob. One day, Jacob was angry and cut the painting in half.
Sadly, Jacob is dead. The next day, Max chats with Lou, who says boredom kills old folks more than diseases. Once again, Max hears the screams, so Max goes to the fourth floor. The scene shocks Max as the patients there are bleeding. They are ancient, stuck in a wheelchair, but each of them has a TV set playing the same news. One of the patients comes running towards Max, scaring him. Thankfully, Juno and Les arrive in time.
What happens to Lou?
Because of this, Max is given a warning to play by the rules. The next day, Max notices Norma arguing with Sabian. After the doctor leaves, Max chats with Norma. Now, Max tells Norma about Luke. After that, Max paints the other half of Jacob’s painting and gives it to Norma. So, Norma tells Max that there is something wrong with the place, and he needs to get out.
Later that night, Max learns from Juno that Norma is in the infirmary as her blood sugar was low. The next morning, as Max mows the lawn, Norma falls from the upper floor and dies instantly in front of Max’s eyes. Now, Sabian gives the cops a note written by Norma that she wants to be with her son. Later, Max asks Lou if he really thinks Norma is the kind of person who could have killed herself. Instead of answering, Lou becomes deranged.
Also Read: The Home (2025) Movie Review
That night, Max wakes up from a bad dream. There is a package waiting for him, and it is a blue light. When Max turns it on, he sees the words “Find the marked ones” above his bed. So, Max heads to Lou’s room and finds an X mark on Lou’s neck. The next morning, Max enters Norma’s room even though it is covered with police tape.
Suddenly, Les arrives and is mad at Max, so Max lies, saying he was looking for something to remember Norma by. Les says Norma is burned in the basement along with her things. In the basement, Max finds a notebook in which Norma has written that people come at night with needles and a dog. Max also sees the trinket, and he takes it. Immediately, Max rushes to Lou but finds him naked, covered in blood, pulling his tooth out, and acting completely deranged.
What happens to Max?
The nurses and doctors treat Lou immediately. When Max returns to his room, he reads about Sabian on the internet and learns that he has been shunned before for conducting human experiments. Suddenly, Max gets a private chat link. In that video, there is a live stream of a woman with a distorted face. The next day, Max orders a spy camera to keep an eye on all the floors and find out what’s happening.
Just then, the live stream turns on and warns Max that someone is coming. At that moment, Juno knocks on the door to inform Max that Lou is doing well. Now, Max talks to the distorted woman. She seeks help from Max to save other people while also warning that ‘these people’ will kill Max. That night, Max turns on the spy camera and keeps an eye on what is happening.
A while later, Max falls asleep and does not see Juno take someone in a wheelchair to the basement. However, Max wakes up just in time to see someone with a dog in the basement talking to Sabian and others. Immediately, Max runs to the basement and can hear the screams. When the hooded figure with the dog turns towards Max, he rushes to his room. Inside a room, a woman is waiting; she is the same one from the live stream. Now, the woman says the government is funding the facility to do experiments on older people. There are many more like this in the country. The woman cares about this because her father is one of those people on the fourth floor. Suddenly, a man from the fourth floor arrives, and the situation gets chaotic, leading Max to fall and hurt his head.
What does Max find at home?
Max wakes up to Juno saying the patient from the fourth floor intended to harm him. However, Sabian will start Max’s examination. As soon as Juno leaves, Max climbs out the window and runs home. At home, Max’s mother introduces him to his new foster sisters. After falling asleep, Max wakes up after a few hours. Now, Max’s mother says, “heart knows heart,” which is something Norma had told Max. Hearing this, Max is surprised, so the mother says it was something an old friend told her, but she can’t remember who it was. The foster parents leave to meet a judge. After that, Max’s foster sisters ask Max if he found the secret place. They notice the trinket on Max’s table and say it is similar to the ones found in the secret place.
The sisters take Max to a secret room. In the room, there are many trinkets similar to the ones Norma had. It is almost like an altar with a goddess-like statue, with a note that reads ‘Dea- Goddess of youth’. The sisters give Max an album with different years on them. In them, Max sees all the people of the retirement home dressed elegantly, with someone looking exhausted in a chair facing the camera. In the last album, it is Luke who is sitting on the chair. So, Max tears the photo and runs to the retirement home to the fourth floor. The man Max was interacting with is none other than Luke. Now, Luke confirms everyone in the picture is the patient on the fourth floor. Suddenly, Les injects something into Max.
The Home (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
When Max wakes up, he is in the same set-up as the photos he has seen. Now, Max is the one in the chair. Sadly, Max’s foster parents are also involved in this drama. It was all a performance that the group does for their ‘food’ (Max). Immediately, Sabian is ready to take the nectar that is residing in Max’s right eye sack. This is the group’s food that keeps them young. Every other day, the nectar is taken from the people of the fourth floor, and new people are added to that group. In anger, Max asks Sabian to take away all the nectar; if not, he will kill them all once this is over. So, Sabian says, once the procedure is done, he will feel like a hundred years old.
Most of these individuals are over a hundred years old. The procedure continues, and Luke takes care of Max. On a stormy, rainy day, Juno visits the fourth floor to see all the patients. Now, Juno notices Max’s empty chain. Suddenly, Max arrives and kills Juno. Max goes on a killing rampage. When Max kills Sabian, he says he will take away all the nectar. The storm gets worse, so the roof detaches itself and hits Max’s foster parents, killing them instantly. In the final scene, the patients on the fourth floor walk away from the retirement home happily.
In the end, Max and the patients on the fourth floor get a happy ending. However, the patients don’t regain their youth. The reason why Max had strength despite his nectar being sucked by the cult is probably because the fourth-floor patients rallied together to give their nectar to Max. This is why he could end the cult once and for all. Now, Max has to care for his foster sisters and Luke. The reason Norma tried to save Max was that he reminded her of her late husband, Jacob. This was probably the argument Norma was having with Sabian. Unfortunately, for many years, Norma still took part in this brutality. The film is a take on the elite older generation that rules the world. It hints at how they feed on people from lower social classes to live grandly.
