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The main character's home comes under attack or siege by some sort of malign force, whether it be foreign, criminal or supernatural. He or she then has to look after the safety and security of his or her person, possessions, family and possible guests, either by driving away the invader(s) or by keeping them at bay until The Cavalry can arrive.
A very wide-ranging trope: Can be found in The Western (native braves besieging a Determined Homesteader), Horror Films (monsters terrorizing an isolated country home) and Crime Thrillers (burglars attempting to break into an otherwise quiet suburban dwelling and terrorizing the inhabitants).
Compare All Your Base Are Belong to Us, another trope with a similar premise.
Film[]
- Wait Until Dark has this as part of the premise: A group of burglars resort to increasingly desperate means to get a poor blind housewife to give up a cocaine-laden doll that was mistakenly delivered to her house.
- The central plot of every Home Alone movie, except the one set in a hotel.
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Kevin: This is my house. I have to defend it. |
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- The finale of Straw Dogs.
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David Sumner: This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house. |
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- Panic Room
- In Shenandoah, a farmer struggles to keep his farm free from both sides of the Civil War.
- Poltergeist: A family's home is invaded by ghosts and their youngest daughter is kidnapped by them.
- The Strangers. A couple is threatened in their home by three masked assailants.
- Parodied in A Christmas Story.
- The Amityville Horror: A family moves into a house that is infested with an evil presence that drove the previous owner to murder.
- Paranormal Activity: A young couple is harrassed by a demon in their new home.
- In the movie Zathura, the house was launched into space and had to be defended against meteors and attacks by aliens.
- Inverted in Hostage. As the movie title would suggest, the kids want the cops to get into the house to reclaim it. A good portion of the movie deals with the cops efforts to save the children in the house.
- In the climax of Small Soldiers, the main characters use their house as a fortress to defend against an army of killer toys.
- Attack the Block is about London delinquents defending their tower block against an Alien Invasion.
- Last stretch of 1982 Alone in the Dark (1982 film) has the main villains attacking Dr. Potter's house.
- The final dramatized encounter with the Fouke Monster in The Legend of Boggy Creek shows the creature attacking a housed shared by two families.
Literature[]
- The Amityville Horror.
- The latter half of the first Artemis Fowl novel is about the title character's manor coming under siege by Elves.
Video Games[]
- Mercenaries: World In Flames has this as a story-required mission, where you have to protect the villa you've been using as a base since you took it from the local Big Bad. Overlaps with All Your Base Are Belong to Us.
- Plants vs. Zombies: It's up to the garden plants to protect the house and its inhabitants from the Zombie Apocalypse.
Web Original[]
- In Red vs. Blue, the "noobs" (basically a parody of Halo players who eternally die and respawn) treat their capture-the-flag game as this.
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"KILL THE REDS!" |
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Western Animation[]
- In a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode, Homer & family have survived a nuclear attack from France, but others in town have become mutated. The mutants attack the Simpsons in their home, but then they are moved by the love Homer & Marge show for each other.
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Flanders: You know, I don't see any reason why freaks and norms can't get along! |
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