Sixth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series #6: Housebound

Housebound, a horror/comedy/thriller from New Zealand, came recommended to me by my friend Spencer R., who played it at his Halloween party last year to good results.  Spencer and I tend to like the same stuff genre-wise - although he draws the line at zombies - so I went into it with confidence.

Kylie is a twenty-something miscreant who gets arrested during a failed attempt at robbing an ATM.  The judge feels that she will not be well-rehabilitated in jail so he sentences her to eight months house arrest, complete with ankle bracelet, with her mother.  Kylie is not much pleased about that: her flaky mother lives out in the country with dial-up internet (THE HORROR), a mumbly new husband and a creepy neighbor.  Plus, it seems as though the big, creaky house they live in is haunted: her mother certainly thinks so - things move or go missing, gadget batteries drain unpredictably, there are noises in the walls - and while the jaded Kylie is skeptical now, when she was a child, she certainly believed in the ghosts.  When the mysterious happenings start to pick up again, Kylie finds an unlikely ally in her parole officer and they learn that the house used to be a halfway house for disturbed teenagers.  At least one girl was killed there and certainly enough psychic torment was unleashed in the house to bring on the disturbances.

I'm not going to go any further because to do so would be to spoil the movie.  The very entertaining Housebound does have a bit of a Shaun of the Dead feel to it (albeit lower key in both humor and gore) but with about twenty minutes left, switches to more of a thriller/comedy.  Kylie is a good anti-hero, not particularly likable but strong and resourceful (her knife and cheese grater combination was excellent).  I enjoyed Housebound quite a lot but it's pretty light on the horror aspects