‘Homecoming’: A Taut Mystery with Stellar Direction

Amazon’s Homecoming finds Julia Roberts starring in a television series for the first time in her career, and she could hardly have made a more cinematic choice for her small-screen debut. Directed by television auteur Sam Esmail, best known as the creator of USA Network’s Mr. Robot, the only small thing about Homecoming is the claustrophobic vise of its mystery. As if claiming itself too large for its own medium, the show frequently toys with the image’s aspect ratio and employs a prodigious amount of split screens, a stylistic technique out of fashion since the ’70s and a particularly audacious choice in the visually cramped era of laptop streaming. The proper reaction to Homecoming’s first episode is, “We’re gonna need a bigger TV.”

The bravado of Esmail’s visual style is pure Hitchcock, sometimes menacing viewers with taut long takes, other times barraging them with an array of close-ups. The opening sequence to episode three, “Optics,” is perhaps the most pitch-perfect homage to Hitchcockian storytelling assembled for television or film in recent years, as irises on a computer screen build the trepidation behind a decisive keystroke and turn an ordinary office cubicle into a site of thrilling suspense.

Astute listeners will also catch hints of Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock’s frequent collaborator, laced throughout the score, and, in fact, those may be more than just hints of Herrmann. They could be Herrmann’s actual music. The entirety of Homecoming’s soundtrack has been recycled from scores to other films. Herrmann is credited in two episodes, and additional audio cameos include the music from The French Connection, All the President’s Men, and Escape from New York.