Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Housebound Blu-ray Movie Review

Look Within

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 20, 2014

New Zealand's latest gift to horror fans is writer/director Gerard Johnstone's debut feature, Housebound, a mash-up of comic, supernatural and detective elements that premiered at Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in March 2014, where audiences were stunned and delighted. Developed and produced over a four-year period at a budget of $250,000, the film has since won the endorsement of no less a connoisseur than Peter Jackson, whose Bad Taste, Dead Alive and The Frighteners are among the classics of horror comedy. XLrator Media was quick enough to acquire the North American distribution rights before word got out. While the company has released its share of disappointingly generic horror offerings, this one deserves attention—immediately.

Much of what makes Housebound so exciting also makes it impossible to discuss without spoiling a first-time viewing. The film is jammed with quirks and offbeat moments that will almost certainly improve on repeat viewings, but Johnstone's originality lies in his seemingly effortless control of a story that bounces all over the place but still holds together. Johnstone has seen all the same movies we have (and more), and he knows exactly where he's going, but he gets there his own way.

Let's start with the heroine, Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O'Reilly, a familiar figure on New Zealand TV). A classic juvenile delinquent from a broken home, she sports a bad attitude and a perpetual glower. In the film's opening (one of several Johnstone tried, according to the commentary), Kylie is arrested after a failed attempt to rob an ATM with her inept boyfriend. Noting that prior stints in rehabilitation programs haven't worked, a judge sentences Kylie to nine months of detention in the worst place on earth: the home from which she ran away. There, she will be forced to live under the supervision of her endlessly prattling mother, Miriam (the scene-stealing Rima Te Wiata), the very sight of whom makes Kylie want to hit someone. (Kylie's father left long ago.)

Miriam lives with her taciturn second husband, Graeme (Ross Harper), in a suitably gothic structure in the fictional town of Bulford. Escorted by a probation officer and a security guard named Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), the sulking Kylie is fitted with an ankle alarm to ensure she can't leave the premises undetected. She's also subjected to counseling sessions by a simpering psychologist named Dennis (Cameron Rhodes). Since every moment spent in the house where she grew up is sheer torture, Kylie hunkers down, determined to make her presence as painful to Miriam and Graeme as theirs is to her.

The complication is that the house is haunted—or so Kylie's mother believes. According to Miriam, the house was once a "bed and breakfast", and perhaps some of the guests never left. Miriam even calls into a late-night radio show to report on the ghosts' activities, which just confirms Kylie's suspicion that the haunted house story is another of Miriam's efforts to get attention. But how, then, does she explain the manifestations she encounters almost immediately upon arrival: strange noises in the night, electrical oddities, objects that seem to have a life of their own, and still other phenomena that are best left for the viewer to discover. Kylie is sure at least some of this is connected to the Bucknells' skulking neighbor, a man called Kraglund (Mick Innes), who skins possums, looks like a serial killer and has distinctive red hair (possibly because he's a red herring; or maybe that's just what we're supposed to think).

Kylie hasn't exactly made any friends either before or during her house arrest, which makes it difficult for her to get help investigating these strange occurrences. But help does arrive from unlikely sources, because you never know who may be an aspiring ghostbuster. One place where help is definitely not available is the local police force, represented by Officers Carson and Grayson (Bruce Hopkins and Millen Baird). They take every report with the same bureaucratic indifference, whether it's a burglary or an attack by supernatural forces. ("Righto!" says Grayson to a report of a ghostly assault that serves as the punchline for the film's trailer.)

Except for Kylie, nobody and nothing is quite what it seems in Housebound, which is why the story seems to keep changing direction, but really it's just Johnstone peeling back layers of narrative as he dishes up one clever reveal after another. In the process, Kylie, who initially seemed like the oddball, becomes the most normal person in the film. Her furious reactions start to make sense, because she is literally trapped in this house where someone or something has a score to settle. As for mother Miriam, she turns out to be unexpectedly valuable in a crisis just by doing (as her daughter says) "what you do best": chattering away about nothing in particular.

Housebound Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Housebound was shot by cinematographer Simon Riera, whose many credits include Xena: Warrior Princess and several Power Rangers series. The project was filmed on what director Johnstone describes as an old Red camera that provided a good image but was subject to constant breakdowns, a common complaint with the early models. (No doubt this camera was used because it came cheap.) Post-production and effects work were completed on a digital intermediate, from which XLrator's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced.

So much of Housebound takes place either at night or in dark interiors that the Blu-ray's deep blacks are essential to Johnstone's carefully designed scares, many of which depend on flickers of movement in deep shadow and one of which requires a total blackout. On the rare occasion when Kylie ventures outdoors in daytime, the sight of her black hair against a bright (but barely blue) sky is a shock to the senses. Detail throughout the image is excellent, and there's a lot to see in the dusty old house jammed with bric-a-brac from various sources, including Graeme's workshop and the classically creepy basement where almost anything might pop out of the shadows. Even more can be seen in several other weird locations that get visited during the course of the film but can't be identified here. Suffice it to say that everything is visible, even in the shadows.

In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the color palette shades toward the sickly and unnatural, with fleshtones that have either too little red or too much. Everything and everyone looks at least a little "off", and some things, like several of the old toys that Kylie encounters and, of course, her neighbor, look a lot "off".

Red footage compresses well, and despite a few frantic scenes of action, Johnstone appreciates the value of stillness in building suspense. As a result, the average bitrate of 20.00 Mbps is sufficient to maintain image quality without artifacts, because there are portions of the film where the rate can drop very far (e.g., where the screen goes to black for several seconds), while spiking way up for others. Overall, it's a first-rate presentation of a film whose visuals consistently affirm the originality and independence of its director's imagination.

Housebound Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 sound mix for Housebound, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, has many wonderful moments that, like much of the film, can't be described without spoilers, starting with the ghostly manifestations that Kylie hears on her first night home. Their very interpretation figures into the story as it develops; so let me just say that they're distinctive, spooky and strangely funny at the same time. They sound like they're coming from exactly the direction where Kylie looks. The film has several such sequences, as well as major scenes of physical action, and the sound design has the heightened and intense quality that is appropriate to the material. As Johnstone notes in the commentary, the violence in Housebound is cartoonish, because characters shrug off all but the most severe injuries as if nothing had happened.

Like nearly all good horror films, Housebound relies on an effective score, in this case by Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper, who was given the daunting challenge of replacing a temp score drawn from what Johnstone called "horror greats" like Christopher Young, Danny Elfman and Jerry Goldsmith. Bridgman-Cooper's score not only sounds excellent on the soundtrack, but it also works for the film in ways that even its director did not expect (he notes one key example in the commentary). The dialogue is clearly reproduced, although American ears unaccustomed to New Zealand pronunciation may struggle with some of the lines. English SDH subtitles are available.

Housebound Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer/Director Gerard Johnstone, Producer Luke Sharp and Executive Producer Ant Timpson: This jocular group, loosened by a bottle of champagne that gets its cork popped midway through, recorded their commentary after the reception at SXSW but before the film had been released in theaters. Sharp was with the project from its early days, but Timpson joined after principal photography and was nicknamed "The Opinion" for his habit of nitpicking plot points, a habit he continues during the commentary. Between giving each other a hard time, the group, led by Johnstone, relates significant information about the writer/director's principal influences, the challenging logistics of shooting (and re-shooting) in and around the several houses that served as the Bucknell home, the subtle digital effects work (mostly used to remove trademarked items that could not be cleared) and various editorial decisions. Johnstone also explains a few local terms and customs for non-Kiwis.



• Deleted Scenes (1080; 2.35:1; 3:59): The scenes cannot be selected individually, but each is preceded by a short screen of text explaining why it was removed. The titles are listed below:
• 2nd Dinner table scene
• Peanut Butter
• Stairwell Argument



• Trailer (1080; 2.35:1; 1:36).



• Additional Trailers: At startup the disc plays trailers for Ironclad: Battle for Blood, The Scribbler, Poker Night and The Mule, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

Housebound Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Housebound isn't a particularly gory film, but it does have some suitably disgusting moments. (As the deleted scenes reveal, others were left on the cutting room floor.) Comedy takes precedence over violence, but the violence is still there, and deaths do occur. Like most hauntings, this one sprang from a ghastly misdeed, but figuring out just what happened requires more than the usual amount of digging into the past, and quite a few people are involved. To say any more would be a crime. Highly recommended.