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Housebound -
This movie proves that New Zealand horror is alive and well despite Peter Jackson going to Hollywood. As the title implies, it's set entirely within a house - a rickety and labyrinthine one, I might add - that is home to Kylie (O'Reilly), but not by choice. A career criminal, she is under house arrest, which she has to spend with her mother and stepfather (Te Wiata and Harper), neither of whom she gets along with. When unexplained things start happening, Kylie suspects the house may haunted, so she tries to unravel its unfortunate history to explain why.
Like Jackson's first few movies, the feature debut of Gerald Johnstone - who also directed M3GAN - is just as funny as it is frightening. Half the comedy comes from the reactions of Kylie, who I would describe as a grownup Wednesday Addams. When it's not her mother grating on her nerves, her deliciously smug and condescending counselor Dennis (Rhodes) picks up the slack. She at least has an ally in Amos, her parole officer whose passion for all things supernatural also brings the laughs. As for the scares, they come from the duo's attempt to unravel the house's mysteries, which besides its red herrings is set back by Dennis and Kylie's mother gaslighting her about it. It's a good mystery, too: as soon as I thought I had it all figured out, it threw me for a loop.
Instead of a rebuttal, I'm providing a rebuttal to rebuttals; in other words, counterarguments to common criticisms I’ve read about this movie. At a running time over 90 minutes, it is long for its genre, but since I was never bored, I didn't notice. Also, while some of the big reveals could be considered over the top or cartoonish, they are tonally consistent, and most importantly, they made me laugh. It ends up being a welcome reminder of how good New Zealand is at horror and comedy and a reassurance that the latter genre is still very much alive in the medium in general. Oh, and speaking of New Zealand cinema, you may remember seeing the actor who plays Dennis in another relatively famous movie filmed in the small country (he played Farmer Maggot).
This movie proves that New Zealand horror is alive and well despite Peter Jackson going to Hollywood. As the title implies, it's set entirely within a house - a rickety and labyrinthine one, I might add - that is home to Kylie (O'Reilly), but not by choice. A career criminal, she is under house arrest, which she has to spend with her mother and stepfather (Te Wiata and Harper), neither of whom she gets along with. When unexplained things start happening, Kylie suspects the house may haunted, so she tries to unravel its unfortunate history to explain why.
Like Jackson's first few movies, the feature debut of Gerald Johnstone - who also directed M3GAN - is just as funny as it is frightening. Half the comedy comes from the reactions of Kylie, who I would describe as a grownup Wednesday Addams. When it's not her mother grating on her nerves, her deliciously smug and condescending counselor Dennis (Rhodes) picks up the slack. She at least has an ally in Amos, her parole officer whose passion for all things supernatural also brings the laughs. As for the scares, they come from the duo's attempt to unravel the house's mysteries, which besides its red herrings is set back by Dennis and Kylie's mother gaslighting her about it. It's a good mystery, too: as soon as I thought I had it all figured out, it threw me for a loop.
Instead of a rebuttal, I'm providing a rebuttal to rebuttals; in other words, counterarguments to common criticisms I’ve read about this movie. At a running time over 90 minutes, it is long for its genre, but since I was never bored, I didn't notice. Also, while some of the big reveals could be considered over the top or cartoonish, they are tonally consistent, and most importantly, they made me laugh. It ends up being a welcome reminder of how good New Zealand is at horror and comedy and a reassurance that the latter genre is still very much alive in the medium in general. Oh, and speaking of New Zealand cinema, you may remember seeing the actor who plays Dennis in another relatively famous movie filmed in the small country (he played Farmer Maggot).