Whose Home Is It Anyway?

The home-under-siege trope is a staple of our dominant storytelling culture: the homestead surrounded, the border under threat, the last stand at the gate… the eight-year-old home alone over Christmas.

The convention is clear: our protagonist’s home or community comes under attack from some malevolent outside force, whether foreign, criminal, or even supernatural. Our hero must then protect themselves, their possessions, their family, and perhaps their whole way of life, either by driving off the invaders or at least holding them at bay until help arrives.

The conventions of this form allow it to be readily co-opted by nationalist and conservative politics, empowering individuals to defend the status quo from ‘outsiders’. Such defence is seen as heroic by default, even when violent.

Right-wing film audiences can indulge in the ‘stand your ground’ fantasy: aggressively seeing off home invaders (Panic Room, 2002; The Purge, 2013), seeking vigilante justice against forces that threaten their community (Death Wish, 1974; Harry Brown, 2009), even defending a home that shouldn’t be their home to begin with (Zulu, 1964).

A particularly egregious example is the recent Citizen Vigilante (2026) starring Armie Hammer (remember him?), which stretches the home-under-siege…