17 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Housebound (2014)

Everyone walks out of a movie once in a while.  Maybe because something pulled you away or maybe because you just couldn't sit through it, whatever the reason, we all walk out of a movie at least once.  Of course, the home version of this is, everyone turns off a movie early once in a while.  There are too many excuses to be made for it so I'm not going to bother saddling them here.  The point is that I once tried to watch Gerard Johnstone's Housebound and I turned it off in the first 20 minutes.  I'm not really sure what the hell I was thinking either, because it's a great film.

A troubled young woman, Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly), botches an attempted ATM theft and is remanded to house arrest at her old home for 8 months.  Upon returning home, with shitty attitude intact, she overhears her mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata), calling in to a radio station to tell about an experience in the basement that led her to believe the house is haunted.  Kylie dismisses this until she starts to experience strange things as well and after a bit of digging with the help of her paranormal enthusiast probation officer, Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), she discovers that the house was previously a half-way house that a young girl was murdered in 15 years ago, and that her spirit is haunting the house.  How do you get rid of a vengeful spirit?  Help it find it's killer of course.

As I said before, the first time I tried to watch this film I only made it about 20 minutes before I turned it off.  My excuses, though they don't really matter, are only two.  One: I was tired. Two: Kylie is such an unlikable character during the first half of the film that it's hard to watch as a result.  This speaks loads to Morgana O'Reilly's performance because she won me over by the end of the film, with a little bit of a rousing pep talk from her probation officer.  She is so nasty, rude, and god damn awful to everyone around her that it made the decision to go to sleep that much easier.  At the prodding of a friend of who visited recently, I decided to give it another go and try to focus on the more humorous aspects of the film.  This helped tremendously.

The film is really quite funny and maintains a dry sense of wit even in some very serious situations.  All of the characters feel like real people, even when they're slight parodies and the intrigue of the mystery increases with the duration of the film so that when it finally comes to the big climactic ending the audience is left with a thoroughly satisfying conclusion.  It occurred to me that there were probably a lot more clues throughout the earlier half of the film that I completely missed, giving the film the appeal of multiple viewings.  Top notch acting and excellent production quality round out a truly entertaining piece of New Zealand cinema!