Masters of Horror episode review — 1.6 — Homecoming

Original air date: December 2, 2005
Director: Joe Dante
Writer: Sam Hamm (short story by Dale Bailey)

Rating: 7/10

This episode is a bit sloppy, but it’s effective political satire nonetheless. It’s thinly veiled, and it’s incredibly obvious in what it has to say, but it also communicates its message quite effectively.

Seeing Bush-era political commentary is a little weird, because it feels like the world — and the country, in particular — has changed so much since then.

We follow two political figures — one a campaign insider, and one who’s basically just Ann Coulter.

When on a talk show, the President’s campaign advisor (Jon Tenney), asserts that he wishes that the dead soldiers from Iraq could come back, because then they’d explain that they died for a good cause and are proud of what they fought for. He gets his wish, but only with the soldiers who aren’t pleased with why they died…which is a lot of them.

It’s an interesting twist on the zombie genre, because they’re not out there trying to kill people. Instead, they just want to vote President Bush out of office so that no more soldiers will die.

There are a couple effective scenes, and a few that are quite funny. Robert Picardo’s kind of hilarious as one of the President’s top advisors — a man who is desperate to find a zombie soldier to endorse the President.

There’s kind of an odd twist with the Jon Tenney character later in the episode that I didn’t much care for. So the episode kind of goes off the rails a bit, but with such a strong premise, it’s still well worth your time.