Housebound

Overview

Hilarious and genuinely terrifying, Housebound is the Kiwi horror comedy that took SXSW by surprise.

Young delinquent, Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly), is sentenced to home-detention after an ill-planned ATM robbery goes terribly, but predictably, wrong. As if mere detainment weren’t enough for the impertinent Kylie, the location of her detainment is at her mum place. Miriam, her mum (Rima Te Wiata), is the antithesis of Kylie: well-meaning, chirpy, out-there—and, to Kylie’s disdain, she believes the house to be haunted by malevolent spirits. Kylie isn’t having a bar of it, but after a disconcerting visit to the basement, she realises mum may not be so mad after all. And what’s that noise in the furnace?

Housebound is director Gerard Johnstone’s first feature, although we know him from TV3’s hilarious Jaquie Brown Diaries from 2008. In Housebound, Johnstone similarly subverts our expectations of genre, but this time does so with the pace, thrill and big scares that only the big screen can bring. Housebound is no spoof though. Unlike Shaun of the Dead (or the more local Black Sheep), which serve to turn every horror trope into a gag, Housebound embraces its genre trappings. The tension is seriously tense. The scares are seriously scary. There were screams. The girl next to me spilt her fanta.

Somehow, Johnstone manages to dance between genuine scares and genuine comedy. Much of the latter comes from strong performances from the small cast. O’Reilly and Te Wiata have rightly drawn tonnes of praise for their diametrically opposed performances as mother and daughter, but so too have the supporting cast. Glen-Paul Waru is hilarious as Amos, the probation officer with a ghost-buster streak and Cameron Rhodes makes the skin crawl as Kylie’s all-too-analytic counsellor.

Housebound is a hilarious NZ-grown genre mash-up. SXSW loved it. Sir Peter Jackson loved it. Entertainment guaranteed.

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