Name: Almost Home
Genre: Drama
Released: 2019-11-29
Duration: 1 h 30 min
Rating: 5.6
Cast: Hannah Marks, Rachel Zimmermann, Sean Martini

Review by Ariel O'Suilleabhain

There are films about runaway teens that lean on spectacle, and then there are films like Almost Home, trembling with the truth that does not raise its voice. Directors Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen build this story not as a linear narrative but as lived experience, stitched from the fragile alliances and sudden ruptures that define life on the streets of Los Angeles.

At the center of the film are two performances that anchor the story: Hannah Marks as Tracy, the 18-year-old heroin-addicted protector, and Rachel Zimmermann as Elly, the 13-year-old runaway fleeing abuse. Their stage names, Tracy and Elly, become more than characters; they become emotional coordinates. The camera returns to them again and again, as if refusing to lose sight of the only two girls in the city who still believe in each other. It becomes a kind of dance between close female friendship and the lens itself.

Camera Work as Emotional Cartography Blank and Jensen use camera angles as both elaboration and emotional architecture. Low, ground-level shots follow the teens' feet as they move through the back alleyways of downtown Los Angeles, emphasizing the instability of their world. Nothing is steady, nothing is promised. Close-ups linger intentionally on Tracy's steady jaw and Elly's intense eyes. These are not glamorized portraits; they are the oceanic study of hourly and daily survival.

Wide shots of Los Angeles, palm trees, neon, and the indifferent sprawl of sea and sand, contrast sharply with the intimacy of the girls' bond. The city is beautiful, but only from far away. Up close, it becomes a machine, one that each teen must rely on while confronting issues with friends who promise to show up and do not, and while keeping boundaries in a hostile environment that shifts by the hour.

The directors construct these close-ups and angles with advantageous restraint. They never tell the audience what to feel. They simply place the camera where the emotional truth already exists.

Dialogue as Survival Language How the group of teens communicate becomes a type of survival language. The dialogue among Tracy, Elly, Critter (Sean Martini), Squid (Niko Guardado), and Scabius (Sam Dillon) unfolds with the halting rhythm of young adults who learned to speak only when words were crucial to surviving the streets. Their language is clipped, coded, and often interrupted by the world around them.

But when they do speak, the words land with weight. Tracy's voice carries the exhaustion of someone who has been too old for too long. Elly's lines are soft, almost whispered, as if she is still learning how to exist without permission. The boys' dialogue is a mix of bravado and vulnerability, a street-born dialect of loyalty, teasing, and unspoken fear.

Themes That Hold the Film Together Runaway survival. Found family. Trauma and resilience. The illusion of safety.

These themes weave through every frame, every silence, and every moment of tenderness between Tracy and Elly. The film does not sensationalize their suffering. Instead, it shows how young people build home out of whatever scraps they can find: a borrowed blanket, a shared cigarette, a promise whispered in the dark.

The five-teen ensemble becomes a temporary family, one built not from blood but from necessity. They speak in fragments, in glances, and in warnings. The script honors that.

Conclusion: A Film That Stays With You Almost Home is not a loud film, but it is a lasting one. Blank and Jensen construct it with a documentarian eye and a poet's patience, blending realism with fiction. Letting the emotional life of these teens rise naturally from the camera's gaze and the quiet honesty of the dialogue, the performances by Hannah Marks and Rachel Zimmermann become the film's gravitational center: raw, unvarnished, and unforgettable.

In the end, the film earns its 80 percent rating not through polish but through truth. It is a story about children who should never have had to grow up this fast, and about the fragile hope that survives even the darkest corners of Los Angeles. It is almost home, and that almost is the part that breaks you.

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)

A group of homeless teenagers in Los Angeles struggle to find themselves.

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Streaming Stars, Then and Now

Kevin Pollak, Peri Gilpin, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bob Saget, Rob Corddry, and Max Burkholder in Benjamin (2019)

Stephan Kampwirth, Susanne Wolff, and Jeremias Meyer in Almost Home (2022)

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Hannah Marks and Rachel Zimmermann in Almost Home (2018)

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