Culture

Rating: A-

Does anyone else feel the pressure to love any film made in New Zealand? Like there’s a special place in hell for those that don’t support Kiwi comedy? What I’m saying is, I do. So when reviewers and punters alike starting raving about Kiwi-made horror-comedy Housebound, a voice inside my head akin to Roz the secretary of Monsters Inc. retorted: we’ll see. And what I did see was completely refreshing, hilarious and promising for the future of New Zealand film.

Housebound follows protagonist Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly), a delinquent charged with eight months of house arrest in her small-town mother Miriam’s (a hilarious Rima Te Wiata) home. As if Miriam’s small-minded chitter-chatter and casual racism aren’t torturous enough, Kylie discovers her old family home is obnoxiously haunted.

The film took off to a slow start that had me very nervous. Don't get me wrong; the beginning half hour was funny and scary, but it was also very typical. The first handful of scenes were full of tired tropes: suspenseful music; stock shots of the haunted house under an ominous sky; the discovery of files that explain the sordid history of the building, blah blah blah. I had settled myself in for an enjoyable but thoroughly predictable couple of hours. HOW WRONG I WAS. This film has three twists. THREE. As soon as you'd wrapped your head around the first bombshell they'd drop another, then another... then another.

I haven't made so much noise in a movie theatre since Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno (which I think we can all agree was visceral). Although Housebound employed the same "someone creepy appears very quickly when you weren't expecting them" technique over and over again, goddamn does it make you jump. Johnstone managed to slightly alter each "shock" moment just enough that each one was funnier, scarier and more ludicrous than the last.

I haven’t laughed this much in a long time. I am proud to say Housebound is international funny, not just Kiwi funny. Quote me.