29 Years Ago, This The X-Files Episode Was So Terrifying It Was Banned & Got a TV-MA Rating
Despite its extremely disturbing content, the episode regularly appears on lists of the best episodes of the series, and is considered one of the most memorable episodes of The X-Files' entire run.
The basic concept of The X-Files has always been that we don't know everything about what's happening on our planet, and that humans are far from being the only intelligent beings in the universe.
After three years of existence, when The X-Files had already become a TV hit, neither viewers, nor critics, nor producers could have imagined that the writers would suddenly decide to move away from this basic principle and make an episode in which there would be no supernatural at all.
29 Years Ago, the Most Unconventional Episode of The X-Files Was Released
If the show is based on the investigation of supernatural phenomena, then why suddenly deviate from the aliens and turn to realism?
In 1996, however, screenwriters Glen Morgan and James Wong did just that, creating one of the most terrifying, disgusting, and unexpected episodes in the history of not only The X-Files, but television in general – Home.
After So Many Years, It Is Still the Most Terrifying Episode of the Show
Many viewers still blame the second episode of the fourth season, Home, for childhood psychological traumas. Unlike the rest of the episodes, Home was not rebroadcast, and the episode was given a TV-MA rating, unprecedented for The X-Files.
29 years after it first aired, it still makes a stronger impression than many other cult episodes.
And at the same time, it reminds us that the scariest monsters around us are usually far from being alien creatures and supernatural parasites.
What Is Home About?
Mulder and Scully arrive in the small town of Home, Pennsylvania to investigate a shocking case. On a baseball field, local children find the body of a baby with severe birth defects, buried alive.
The trail leads the agents to the Peacock family – three brothers living on an abandoned farm with no electricity or running water, completely isolated from the outside world.
Gradually, Mulder and Scully uncover a monstrous truth involving years of incest in the suspects' family.
Home Is Made in the Spirit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Wrong Turn
Home looks more like an episode of a horror anthology featuring characters from The X-Files than an episode of The X-Files itself.
The Peacocks, in particular, resemble the creepy cannibals from Wrong Turn. In terms of atmosphere, this is no futuristic-philosophical sci-fi, but a realistic sketch about human cruelty. Not like in The Thing or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but like in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes.
It is not surprising that the network's representatives and many fans were not enthusiastic about this experiment. However, it was precisely the fact that Home was so different from the rest of the series that gave it a cult status.
