After a bungled robbery, Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) is sentenced to house arrest at her childhood home, a place her chatty mom (Rima Te Wiata) thinks is haunted. Kylie ignores her mom, per usual, but the weird sounds, power failures and spooky things that do seem to be happening catch her attention. Gerard Johnstone’s horror comedy (a New Zealand import) has much to recommend it: a plot full of twists, a take-charge female lead, the requisite jump-out scares, the odd bit of blood-spurting, well-integrated humor and a comprehensive exploration of the term “housebound.”
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2014.
