Housebound

Screening: May 9, 2014, 12am

Running Time: 109 minutes

Directed by Gerard Johnstone

Starring Morgana O’Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru, Cameron Rhodes, and Millen Baird

Synopsis:
Kylie Bucknell is forced to return to the house she grew up in when the court places her on home detention. Her punishment is made all the more unbearable by the fact she has to live there with her mother Miriam – a well-intentioned blabbermouth who’s convinced that the house is haunted. Kylie dismisses Miriam’s superstitions as nothing more than a distraction from a life occupied by boiled vegetables & small-town gossip. However, when she too becomes privy to unsettling whispers & strange bumps in the night, she begins to wonder whether she’s inherited her overactive imagination, or if the house is in fact possessed by a hostile spirit who’s not particularly thrilled about her return.

What the Critics Are Saying:
“Housebound chops its way through horror-movie tropes with abandon, rejecting most, embracing a few, and conjuring up a couple of new twists.”
–Peter Martin, Twitch

“Sometimes at the festival you walk into a room knowing nothing, sit down, and get your skull punched in by a movie that is calibrated perfectly, that knows exactly what it wants to do, and that seems almost unnaturally confident considering it was made by a first-time feature director.”
–Drew McWeeny, Hitfix