Housebound is a New Zealand, low budget, horror comedy from 2014 directed and written by Gerard Johnstone. This was his debut feature movie, but I’ve already reviewed another of his movies in M3gan. That one earned my praise and it was enough that I had to see if the director had done anything else. So here we are. Housebound stars Morgana O’Reilly as “Kylie”, a delinquent young adult that is caught after stealing from an ATM and given a sentence of house arrest.
This forces her to return to her childhood home and her mother “Miriam” (Rima Te Wiata). Glen-Paul Waru plays her parole officer “Amos”, who happens to double as a ghost hunter. This turns out be handy as Miriam believes the house to be haunted and while skeptical at first, Kylie has started to suspect the same. After some investigation they conclude the spirit in the house may be that of a murdered young woman and set about trying to solve the murder and maybe bring her some peace. But not everything is quite as it seems.
This is a film that throws in a whole load or elements. It’s a horror comedy with strong mystery elements, but it swerves the mystery and the horror tropes several times throughout. With something like that there is a danger of just being a mess. Fortunately, the film paces itself out sensibly and fences elements into each act. The first act is a haunted house story, the second a murder mystery and the third a battle for survival. The horror, comedy and mystery elements are trickier to balance and there was always a chance going for all three would diminish each and that is the case to some extent here. Certainly the film is neither hilarious, nor scary. But it’s not a disaster. The movie is entertaining.
As a mystery the movie manages to not be too obvious as it drops its twists. But then a lot of the twists come from new information so it’s not like you could guess it. It is done well enough. As a comedy the movie is more quirky than outright funny. At no point did I actually laugh, but I was often amused. As a horror, there are a couple of jump scares and a creepy teddy bear but not much else. As the movies twists, it also change which sub-genre of horror it belongs to and with it what tropes it throws at you. The switch around is entertaining in it’s own way, but none of it really excels. It’s more about how the pieces fit together than the quality of each one. Probably the best moment for comedy horror is at the explosive conclusion.
Conclusion
Overall this is pretty decent. For a directorial debut its impressive even. Since I’ve seen M3gan, I can confirm Gerard Johnstone is heading in the right direction. I look forward to seeing where he goes next. Housebound isn’t quite as good as M3gan and it’s not one I’ll be buying on Bluray, but it’s still a recommendation. An entertaining film which manages to be original even while it throws recognizable tropes at you. This is a strong 6/10
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