Housebound (2014)

Just so...so bad

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Standard: whenever a horror film has a high rating, it invariably turns out to be crap. If you prefer to be alternately bored (the damn thing is almost two hours) but also flabbergasted by the most asinine plot imaginable, watch this garbage. Just don't go whining to me that I hadn't warned you.It's not a real comedy. It's just a highly cretinous thriller with the usual sub-standard Kiwi humour thrown in occasionally. The plot-twists are mind-boggling in their imbecility, starting from the guy who's been living - undetected - within the walls of the house for years (living on air and worms?), then the junkie who doesn't lose her house-arrest privileges even after numerous incidents (including stabbing a man with scissors), all the way to the intelligence-insulting twist that gives us the SOCIAL WORKER as the girl's killer. Utter rubbish in every conceivable way, with so many plot holes that it's the movie equivalent of cheese. Avoids the lowest rating for the peeing scene.

I've watched Housebound three times now, each with different family members or friends and I really love it. I honestly can't identify or understand the negative reviews I see here. The movie is funny (slapstick and dead-pan); original, it's acted so well and there are twists in the plot I didn't see coming. It's a bit scary in places, so it gets your heart racing, but there is no gore. At the time I write this, the movie is scoring 6.8 / 10 on imbd, but it's one of the most fun movies I've seen in the last four years, I'm really surprised it hasn't scored higher.

After an ATM robbery gone hilariously awry, petty thief Kylie (Morgana O'Reilly) is sentenced to house arrest at her childhood home, with her slightly daffy mother (Rima Te Wiata) and her basically mute stepfather (Ross Harper). It's a dismal, dilapidated place filled with musty old paperbacks, ample crawl spaces, dial-up internet and...a ghost? What do you do when you're in a possibly haunted house, but you can't leave due to the monitoring bracelet on your ankle? What's worse: the supernatural or prison? "Housebound" has a strong, clever premise, which is the reason anyone would give this a go in the first place. I know it's what drew me in. (The fact that it's streaming on netflix, which means one can watch it with practically no effort, only sweetened the deal.) And director/writer Gerard Johnstone has a gift for setting up all kinds of unexpected twists, red herrings and other surprises, which kept me intrigued despite the film's slow patches.Unfortunately, those slow patches exist. And despite the clever premise, twisty storyline and unique characters/situations, the movie never quite engaged me. I was never hooked by it, merely casually interested throughout. It's an interesting movie, but never a great one. It's also never remotely scary, or even creepy. The setting and cinematography are pretty dingy and dismal, which doesn't help matters much either. There's a certain lack of energy here and the performances are serviceable without making much of an impression. Honestly, if not for the movie's impressive cleverness, I don't know if I would have stuck with it to the end.Still, I liked "Housebound" overall. As I said, it is clever and manages some genuine surprises. I just wish the filmmakers had done more to hook me and get me emotionally invested in the story and characters. If they had, maybe I would have jumped when they wanted me to, or been closer to the edge of my seat. As is, however, I never had more than a casual interest in anything happening on screen. I even got up to get a snack without pausing the movie, which is never a great sign during an initial viewing.

We watched this with two of our teenage kids on a Saturday afternoon. It was WAY better and way different than I thought it would be. So much so that I actually made an account with IMDb just so I could write a review for this film. We watch a lot of 'scary' movies because it's the one genre we can all agree on, so we've gotten pretty used to the typical plot lines, twists, jumps, etc. This movie is such an interesting combination of scary and funny---but not slapstick or 'dumb' stuff to get a laugh, just genuinely funny moments that are central to the plot and endearing. We laughed out loud multiple times. And the scares are...not typical. This is the first movie I can ever remember ALL of us screaming. I thought the acting was good, I felt really fond of the main characters by the time it ended. Advice: we found the accents (New Zealand) hard to understand at times. Turning on the subtitles helped. I think this is an overlooked little gem that deserves a lot more recognition. Great movie.