By Tristan Bishop
Freshness is a rare thing for us horror fans. The very nature of genre is repetition, after all – and so over the past hundred years of horror films, the same situations, characters, locations, set-ups and pay-offs appear again and again. A lot of films actively homage past pinnacles of the genre, many others blatantly rip off whatever is doing good business, but it’s not that often that the old tropes get arranged in a way that surprises those who have seen more than a few dozen horror films. Of course there’s joy, even comfort, to be found in the way things get rehashed and re-packaged but rarely do we see something which confounds our expectations, and it’s often genuinely exhilarating when this happens. In the past twelve months I’ve see precisely two films which have made me feel this way, one being David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (my review), and the other being a low-budgeted little film from New Zealand called Housebound.
With new films I try to make a point of knowing as little as possible about them when I go in – not that easy in the era of the internet, where it’s almost impossible to look at social media without someone speculating (and I’ll admit it’s sometimes me) about the new trailer for the latest blockbuster sci-fi or superhero movie. Which is one reason film festivals are such a pleasure – I generally have no idea about the content of a film being shown so far before its (probable) release. This was the case with Housebound (which I caught at 2014’s Abertoir fest) – aside from knowing there was a buzz about it, and that people whose opinions I trust rated it highly, I knew nothing about the film whatsoever. In that spirit, My synopsis of the film will ignore everything after the first twenty minutes. Trust me, it’s for your own good.
Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) is a bit of a troubled young lady. We are introduced to her as she is attempting to indulge in the robbery of an ATM. Unfortunately her partner-in-crime manages to be a little clumsy with his sledgehammer and knocks himself out, botching the job entirely, and ensuring they get swiftly picked up by the police. It turns out this isn’t the first time Kylie has been in trouble, and thus she gets sentenced to eight months house arrest. Kylie doesn’t have the best of relationships with her mother or step-father, and reverts to insolent type as she lounges around their large but run-down house, annoying them by raiding the fridge, smoking indoors and hogging the TV with old films when it’s Coronation Street night (this is a thing in New Zealand?). It’s a good job the house is large, as Kylie has been fitted with an ankle alarm by their friendly neighbourhood security contractor Amos (a charming performance by Glen-Paul Waru), which will go off if she decides to leave the premises. One night when Kylie turns on a radio phone-in show she hears the voice of her mother talking about supernatural experiences in the house. Kylie, being your no-nonsense type, isn’t having any of it, but late one night she follows the ringing of her phone into the cavernous basement, and thereby sets off a sequence of events which form the next, glorious, eighty minutes of the film.
I’ve described Housebound as a roller-coaster ride before, and I’ll stick by that on second viewing, although it’s one which doesn’t shed any of its thrills through familiarity – although I knew what was coming I was still impressed by the technical skill with which writer-director-editor Gerald Johnstone pulls it off. Far from throwing us around at random tangents, every little twist and turn is well-signposted (and not obviously so) and makes logical sense in the context of what has come before. Much has been made in previous reviews of the amount of humour in Housebound too – in fact it has so many laughs (including some very subtle ones I missed on the first viewing) that one could almost class it as a comedy, were it not dealing with some fairly disturbing subject matter, or if it wasn’t so genuinely, teeth-clenchingly tense on occasion. Genres are balanced so well here, in fact, that it makes it look easy, and makes the viewer question why more films don’t attempt (or succeed at) this. There’s even some sparing but suitably nasty/hilarious gore gags in there.
Whilst much of the praise must obviously go to Johnstone here, we shouldn’t overlook the cast. All the main characters in this film give pitch-perfect performances; all of them are at home with the dead-pan comedic nature the film demands, although there are also scenes where they show something a little deeper – a touching scene between Kylie and her step-father Graeme (played by Ross Harper), for instance, with the man attempting to open up. Rima Te Wiata, who plays the mother, has been rightly singled out for praise in genre awards, but special mention must also go to the aforementioned Harper, Waru and O’Reilly too.
I’ve been trying to think of a negative point about the film, and it’s been very difficult to come up with anything. The closest I’ve been able to get is that the colour scheme, consisting mostly of brown, black and grey, is a little drab, but it perfectly suits the dusty, run-down old house it is, for the most part, set in, and as such I can’t really call it a fault, especially when everything else, from the editing to the sound design is pulled off beautifully.
It’s quite a surprise, therefore, to learn that a US remake of Housebound is due in 2016. One wonders, aside from some marquee casting, what needed fixing in the first place. It would be a real shame to have such a little gem of a film sullied by messing with the timing or diluting the humour.
As it stands Housebound is a pretty near perfect film, and if you missed it on the big screen, I would recommend you catch at home, with the lights out, as a late night weekend treat. You won’t regret it.
Housebound is out now on Region 2 DVD from Metrodome.