I think this movie lacks so much of substance, it is even not worth a discussion.<br /><br />In the first, the package is really disgusting. Especially the stereotype filming and photographing. Surely, Joe Dante's cinematic stile was appropriate and interesting in "Gremlins" and "Small Soldiers", I mean the imaginative and visual pretty story telling of a Spielberg-wunderkind (I really loved these movies), but in "Homecoming" it was a completely failure. Attacks of toy soldiers and hairy creatures is simply not comparable with zombie-invasions (dead, stinky, rotten beings trying to kill the living - without any logical reason, just because they hate them). <br /><br />Zombie flicks are characteristic in plain, direct, unconventional and brutal cinematography. Nothing to be seen in Joe Dante's debut. Another point is the annoying content: really stupid dialogs between the two main characters, a gruesome exploitation of the "elder brother dies and leaves the younger traumatized" and bad acting. And, by the way "Homecoming" is neither scary, nor gory - and even less entertaining. You see, it is even not a horror movie.<br /><br />Zombie movies in the decade of their birth - it the end of 60s/ start of the 70s - used to be revolutionary, provocative (espicially through its gruesome, explicit content) and of subtle social critic. THE ORIGINAL Zombie film was actually a midnight-movie named "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). This one was a low budget movie that covered so many controversial themes, it's hard to name them all: a visual style of Hitchcock/Raimi, the American lifestyle of the 70s, political aloofness, the upcoming breakthrough of the human rights of black people and the even more upcoming racism as a result on the side of the conservative Americans (remember the shooting of the black main character in the end of the movie).<br /><br />If you are interested in the creativity of midnight movies and want to learn more about the most important ones, I recommend you "Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream ".<br /><br />So steer clear of "Homecoming" and even so of Romero's "Land of the Dead".