House hunting in Japan often comes down to settling for the least bad option. Maybe your potential new home faces north and gets no sunlight, but it’s near the station and the kids’ school. So after months of fruitlessly searching for something better, you sign on the dotted line.
In Takumi Saitoh’s slow-burn horror “Home Sweet Home,” a young couple with a toddler daughter miraculously finds a perfect house designed by a company called Magic Homes. Shivering in their current flimsy dwelling in snowy Nagano Prefecture, they love the new house’s heating system that blows warm air to every nook and cranny, though the claustrophobic husband, Kenji Kiyosawa (Masataka Kubota), passes out the first time he inspects the cramped basement where the AC control unit is located.
Kenji is even more convinced to buy after the charming young saleswoman (the single-named Nao) volunteers to be their architect and design the house to their needs. Brushing aside other architectural options proposed by her smarmy boss, Amari (Yohei Matsukado), he is soon the proud owner of a Magic Home.