Housebound (2014)

Few movies have any surprises in them these days and those that do are usually not of the good variety.  Housebound, the debut film of Gerard Johnstone of M3GAN fame, is one of the good ones.  Like all the best fright films from New Zealand this was made on a shoestring budget and with help from the New Zealand Film Commission, who has always seemed like a bunch of weird horror fans rather than some stuffy bureaucratic office.  

Low budget means, as usual, an economic use of sets and places, and Housebound is no different.  The title pretty much gives that away, but the special thing about this movie is that it begins as a haunted house film and evolves into something else as it goes along.  Add the usual dry Kiwi sense of humor and it turns into something special.

Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly) is a young criminal who, after a failed ATM robbery, is put under house arrest with her mother Miriam (Rima Te Wiata) and stepfather Graeme (Ross Harper).  It's a home that she has always hated and had run away from years before but is now confined to for seven months with an ankle bracelet monitored by security tech Amos (Glen-Paul Waru).  She is also forced to endure counseling sessions with social worker Dennis (Cameron Rhodes).  After the monitor registers a false breech one night Miriam lets it slip to Amos that she thinks the house is haunted and he, the amateur ghost hunter that he is, sets up the house to monitor for supernatural activity.

Kylie finds out that the home used to be a halfway house and a girl named Elizabeth was brutally murdered there in 1996, with the killer never found.  She and Amos begin to believe that she may be the ghost haunting the home, as well as the fact that their strange neighbor Kraglund (Mick Innes) may have been involved.  While they bungle the investigation of Kraglund's home they do learn that the actual killer may have been a boy named Eugene (Ryan Lampp).  Meanwhile, the disturbances continue, and it turns out that Eugene may never have left the scene of the crime. 

Housebound is a horror comedy, but not a slapstick one in the style of Peter Jackson's early films.  Instead, Johnstone keeps the humor subtle and out of the way of the suspense, of which there is quite a bit.  What could have been the usual "put the restless spirit to rest" plot evolves as the film goes on into something much more interesting, with most of the humor having to do with the fact that our amateur sleuths are rather bad at what they are doing.  There is a reason Kylie had been caught so many times.

Morgana O'Reilly plays Kylie as a spoiled brat which, thankfully, begins to fade as things progress, especially since neither Miriam nor Graeme appear to be bad people deserving of her wrath.  Kylie is not a sympathetic character for a good portion of the film.  It does give her room to evolve, which to Johnstone's credit he lets her.  

What slapstick there is handled well by Glen-Paul Waru, with Amos becoming more and more a friend to Kylie and Miriam as things go on.  The makeup design of Eugene is done well and, when the final reveal comes, there is plenty excitement to be had.  Much of it may be confined to the house but Johnstone again gets creative with it.  This is one of those films where the twists and turns work and make sense rather than just being random or an afterthought.  

Housebound (2014)

Time: 107 minutes

Starring: Morgana O'Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, Ryan Lampp, Cameron Rhodes

Director: Gerard Johnstone