Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Housebound

I feel like I've been waiting for this movie a long time.  Not only in the sense that I missed it when it came (very briefly) through my local movie theater, but also in the sense that it's a horror film which manages to be genuinely scary and genuinely funny.



The main character, Kylie, starts off the movie with a botched attempt to rob an ATM.  It's the kind of everything-goes-wrong crime that'd get you put in prison in the United States for 5-10 years, but thankfully this movie is from New Zealand, so Kylie gets put under house arrest instead.  She's a total brat, and acts just like a teenage girl who hates her parents and has been literally locked in with them.  Which is to say she's not a terribly likeable character initially.


Kylie's mum thinks the house is haunted, something the young criminal initially scoffs at.  However, she quickly changes her tune when creepy things start happening around the house.  This, of course, leads to shenanigans involving the security guy who is assigned to Kylie's ankle bracelet.


I don't want to spoil the film, so I won't go too much further into it, but you'll scream, you'll laugh, you'll cower behind the covers.  It's that sort of movie.  It's full of unexpected plot twists and has about an equal number of surprise laughs as surprise screams.


It's important to note that none of these laughs are unintentional, or the result of plotholes or poor movie making.  A lot of the humor surrounds the tensions between mother & daughter, and through the film both of them grow on you.



The film passes the betchel test with flying colors, with two of the three main characters being women.  We have one main character who is a person of color (and is in many ways more a main character than the mother) which is nice.  There are no romantic plotlines of any nature, which I appreciated.  And best of all it's just a genuinely good horror-comedy.

5/5

I love this film.

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