Housebound

Kylie and an associate decide to try and break into an ATM machine, but it all goes awry when the machine is so damn hard to bust open, resulting in a sledgehammer injury and a car that gets stuck on a road bump! Arrested and sentenced to stay at her mom's home, Kylie might just have her hands full with a murder mystery, pangs with family, possible rage issues, a potential ghost, and maybe even "someone living within the walls of the house"!

***½ / *****

What I find terribly amusing about Housebound (2014), a New Zealand “ghost comedy” is the irony of the genesis of its plot: a serial petty criminal, who just can’t seem to go the straight and narrow, always in trouble and going through the grinds of rehabilitation, is sent home to remain with her parents for “stability”, but if anything this is the grandest punishment that could have been burdened upon her. The ankle bracelet is certainly a ball and chain. Her home, according to her mom, is haunted. She flippantly pokes and prods at her moms for such lame claims. She’s in for a rude awakening…childhood fear gives way to adult terror.

She’s a feisty, sarcastic, sardonic sort who carries that scowl and pissed-off expression doggedly no matter what happens. For her to crack a smile and find something worthwhile would take quite a bit of work. One moment in the film has her taking a piss and hearing “haunts” (the score attached to the spooks has violins kind of playfully tickling the sound effects, telling us that this isn’t exactly a Blumhouse joint), listening on for a bit before further bursts of urine blast into her toilet…it is a rather humorous and effective ballet that is equal parts funny and creepy. This isn’t easy to do.

Oh, the irony: to be shackled to a haunted house! Will our protagonist defiantly spit in the face of what she might see and hear…and feel?

“Kylie…its half past 11.”

“Oh, no. I’m gonna be late.”

“Be late for what?”

“Nothing.”

The protagonist is really taxing on many a viewer. She is a bitch. Let’s cut to the chase. She eats her mom’s meatloaf and drinks her booze, wearing that poisonous, noxious scowl as if her plight is on everyone else, not herself. She’s a prisoner in this home and everyone can kiss her ass. Disrespectful to her subservient mom (she walks on eggshells in her own house) and doesn’t even treat her stepfather as if he exists (he rarely speaks, seemingly a zombie without much personality or soul), Kylie operates under her own rules and thumbs her nose at any request for peace and tranquility. She’s right fit for a good jolt.

One’s thing for sure: I think you’ll never quite look at “Hello, Moto” the same way again. And Jesus even gives Kylie a bit of a scare! You’ll see what I mean if you ever follow Kyle down into the basement in Housebound. “This house is prone to…certain disturbances”. Although, Kylie does her whole “I’m not scared of shit” act, the “teddy bear” episode sure rocks her resolve abit…particularly when it returns from burning in a fireplace (and getting rammed by a dresser drawer) to surprise her in the shower!

Morgana O’Reilly is quite a pistol as Kylie. She’s got quite a mouth on her and just kind of says what she thinks, with fuck-all (something she’d use in her speech) to anyone’s feelings that could be hurt. Rima Te Wiata is more or less a nervy punching bag as Kylie’s mother, Miriam. It is introduced a little late into the film that Kylie is bipolar. Kylie dismisses this as a reason to get hand-outs, but I think that might not be a bad diagnosis. Although, most of the time she’s just in a plain sour mood. I’d even call her toxic. People try as they can to have some sort of conversation with her, but at some point she is always goes off on them, with an insult or two resulting. Glen-Paul Waru is the patient and even-keeled “monitor device officer”, Amos, who tolerates a lot of smack from Kylie. He is one true ally, though, as it all plays out, but another figure emerges also.

If you watch enough Onryo films, you know that behind the ghost girl/apparition that begins to beckon help from a lead character in many a Japanese revenge-spirit horror film is an angle that presents itself in puzzle pieces. The lead character begins to piece puzzles to the mystery of what happened to the ghost haunting her into action to solve what made her dead in the first place. There’s a little twist on Housebound (2014) I admired. When you first watch this, it does seem to model itself out of an Onryo film structure. I guess I should elaborate: the leads in those Japanese ghost films aren’t quite nearly as abrasive as Kylie, but she is given purpose to find the killer of a half-way house patient.

This is also one of those “house with a history” films. The house Miriam bought when Kylie was a child wasn’t a discarded bed and breakfast as told…Miriam wasn’t keen on sharing the secret behind its true history with her young daughter. Why do so even later when Kylie, already a bit of human wreckage in need of guidance (guidance no one seems able to provide), return home as a troubled adult? Kylie will soon find out, though. So it was a half-way house for troubled youths in need of differing types of rehabilitation. A murder (the female patient was stabbed over 60 times!) took place which closed it down for good. So the house is cheap and in need of someone willing to live in such a place of severe notoriety. Miriam’s cheap husband (who eventually leaves her and Kylie) thought it was worth the investment…lucky for him he got out while the going was good. Afterward, Miriam met and married a quiet and unassuming ragamuffin named Graeme (Ross Harper) who just doesn’t talk much. He tries, bless his heart, to stir up a bit of talk with Kylie but she just wanted away from him as soon as possible. She ends up stabbing the poor guy with garden shears believing he was a greasy junk yard dog named Kraglund (Mick Innes), a neighbor prone to skinning rabbits and collecting garbage (he just doesn’t throw anything away). Red Herring, anyone? Amos does learn of a kid named Eugene that was left with him, and a rather unpleasant back story regarding their short time together before the abandoned went away to find a hole to settle in elsewhere. Eugene becomes a very important player in the grand scheme of things, and the half-way house could very well be a place of refuge that introduced Kylie to him.

The film works in a variety of ways. It confronts the issues of domestic strife. Mother and daughter difficulties. Dealing with uncertainty in your life and not having a defined road ahead to travel. No direction seems available, and there is just this state of inertia. Kylie combats everyone with her fists being her mouth. Don’t even dare try to get too close to her: she’s liable to snap at your affection like a rabid Cujo after a deputy. Miriam endures a lot, though, God bless her.

A character that seems minute among the principles winds up being quite important. Again, there is a killer and mystery regarding the person he murdered. Most of the time, such a revelation isn’t introduced into the plot and left to wander aimlessly into the ether. You have to imagine that Kylie and Miriam will have to evade danger…either from the *ghost* or a killer needing his secret to remain unaltered by unwanted investigation. So the finale brings it all together. The killer will try to silence those who endanger his secret, Eugene may be an inadvertent aid to the protagonists attempt to avoid peril from the antagonist (the house has a few surprise passageways that lead to secret crawlspaces and a room which might explain some of the strange noises throughout the floors and walls), and Amos (following the odd behavior from Kylie’s monitor device when she tampers with it purposely to draw him to help) answering a call that might bring him right into the heart of the beast all close out the suspense finale. As you might have guessed, there’s a retreat out of the top story window which leads to the roof where someone might just fall off and crash to the ground below, and perhaps mother and daughter can find some common ground. The film won’t altogether announce that Kylie is just going to change into someone cherubic, but maybe this confrontation (which has her being stabbed in the leg by a butcher knife while narrowly escaping a more gruesome fate thanks to a clothes basket!) will be the catalyst in a self examination.

Cameron Rhodes is Dennis, the assigned psychologist to Kylie, who himself gets plenty of doses of his patient’s attitude. He has that playfully affable face that just peekaboos a bit of sinister. What I like about Cameron is how he can twist a calm into something rather disconcerting…one good scene has him listening to Miriam drone on as she does when the talk locomotives dialogue that is inconsequential and rather cumbersome, beginning to come unglued from a sensitive, docile passivity. When he goes for a pee, the film takes off the remaining minutes as a scramble inside the house (and in the innards of the house) leads to a head explosion thanks to a meat fork lined by a wire plugged into a microwave!