Julia Roberts Gives Her Best Performance In Years In Sam Esmail’s ‘Homecoming’ Amazon Series [Review]

Julia Roberts makes an impressive television debut in Amazon’s half-hour drama “Homecoming.” With all 10 episodes directed by “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail, “Homecoming” aesthetically and thematically can be viewed as an unofficial companion piece to that show. While sometimes overwhelmed by Esmail’s stylistic choices, “Homecoming” is a well-crafted paranoid mystery that is engrossing for its short runtime.

Adapted from their popular Gimlet Media podcast of the same name by creators Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz, “Homecoming” follows case worker Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts), whose work at the Homecoming facility sees her help combat veterans reintegrate into civilian life. Working with one particular veteran, Walter Cruz (Stephan James), Heidi struggles to maintain a professional distance while, also, negotiating the constant badgering from her overbearing boss Colin Belfast (Bobby Cannavale), who only sees the veterans as a method of collecting data. What that data is and the purpose behind Homecoming gradually reveals itself, as the show toggles back and forth in time.

The other half of the series takes place four years in the future wherein a Department of Defense caseworker (Shea Whigham) investigates an anonymous claim against the facility only to find that Heidi, now working as a waitress and living with her mother (Sissy Spacek), claims she doesn’t remember her previous work and that almost all references to the Homecoming program have disappeared entirely. 

This non-linear technique is home to Esmail, who directs every episode and puts his oft-kilter visual stamp on every frame.  His brilliant work, both writing and directing, on USA’s “Mr. Robot” has, in many ways, refashioned the television landscape and made him one of the few television auteurs that have produced consistently good content. While he’s only directing here, it’s clear that Esmail is the driving force behind this version of “Homecoming,” bringing along most of his “Mr. Robot” crew to create his patented long takes and left-of-center framing that is obvious from the series’ first moments.  

Esmail is also an incredibly showy director, pulling out every stylistic trick he can. “Homecoming” is sometimes overwhelmed by these choices, as simple scenes are constantly filtered through his go-for-broke aesthetic. The most prominent of which is the decision to shoot the future timeline in a rectangular aspect ratio that recalls something shot vertically on an iPhone. The choice is incredibly disorienting and while it gets a pretty amazing explanation in an episode later in the season, be prepared to watch a few hours in this stylized boxy frame.

Additionally, before Bloomberg and Horowitz narrative clarifies and focuses in a few key characters (Bergman, Cruz, and Belfast), they introduce a number of periphery characters that seemingly go nowhere. Dermot Mulroney, Alex Karpovsky, Frankie Shaw, and Spacek are welcome additions but essentially wasted in bit roles that never materialize into anything substantial. Amazon has already picked up the show for a second season, so it remains to be seen if these characters will be fleshed out next season.

Roberts anchors the entire story and, surprisingly, has picked a completely unshowy role for her television debut. If Esmail goes maximalist, Roberts compensates with her naturalistic acting style, giving her best performance in years. Cannavale’s Belfast, who is essentially a co-lead, counters Roberts calm playing smug to an extreme. His constant berating phone calls to Heidi highlight just how in control Belfast needs to feel. Whigham, playing a corporate drone in over his head, is given the least to do, besides seeming confused, but the actor sells his everyman well against Roberts and Cannavale’s showier roles.

“Homecoming,” thus, fits well as a companion piece to “Mr. Robot,” expanding on many of the latter show’s thematic preoccupations. Paranoia, technological distrust, and institutional malfeasance are centralized within the first season. In fact, there is no director working today that represents paranoia better than Esmail. Riffing on everything from “The Conversation” to Hitchcock, “Homecoming” revels in slow zooms and a sinister score to build tension, highlighting the anxiety present in even the most mundane of scenes.

After the events of the first season, it’s unclear where the story will go in its second season, as Esmail, Bloomberg, and Horowitz have crafted a pretty great self-contained mystery. An antithesis to the bloat that exists in many streaming shows, the five hour season goes by quickly, trimming whatever fat (and characterization) that may have existed in a longer version. Esmail prioritizes the mystery above all else, which is simultaneously refreshing and more than a bit frustrating. While Esmail’s directorial choices may, at times, be too much, “Homecoming” is a fascinating series and Roberts’ best performance in years. [B]