Housebound (2014) Review

Welcome to Day Two of horror comedies from New Zealand! There are more of these than I realized – I could’ve done a whole week of this genre. But, nah – I’m not that organized so I’m only doing three days. Yesterday I reblogged What We Do In The Shadows & tomorrow I’ll be looking at Deathgasm. Today let’s talk about Housebound…

Housebound (2014)

Directed & Written by Gerard Johnstone

Starring: Morgana O’Reilly, Rima Te Wiata, Glen-Paul Waru

Plot Synopsis: (via IMDB)
A young woman is forced to return to her childhood home after being placed under house arrest where she suspects that something evil may be lurking in the house.

My Opinion:

This is one of those movies, like Blue Ruin, that I hadn’t heard of until a bunch of bloggers started raving over it after seeing it on Netflix (or wherever it popped up, meaning everyone saw it at the same time). Hmm. I love you guys! Seriously. I know I’m a bit of a nerd & don’t really fit in with people sometimes due to my not-exactly-mainstream taste in films so I often take the opinions of movie bloggers more seriously than I would “real life people” when it comes to movies. But, sometimes, y’all are NUTS! Lol! Oh well – at least I didn’t hate Housebound as much as I did Blue Ruin. 😉

I looked like all of these people while sitting through this movie. 

Don’t worry – I’ll try to not totally trash this movie. I saw this ages ago now & have to say it’s grown on me a tiny bit. I can even honestly understand why some people really liked this one. It just didn’t work for me, mainly, because 1) The main girl is hateful and 2) I don’t think it really fulfills the requirements to be called a comedy (since it isn’t very funny) or a horror (since it isn’t scary – just briefly gory at the very end after an hour & a half of nothing happening). Okay, I guess that’s three things…. 3) Nothing happens until the last 20 minutes or so! It was a hell of a slog getting through this one – it was actually even worse than Blue Ruin for feeling like it would never end.

That’s the main girl. She gives that same sort of hateful look throughout the entire film.

Oh yeah – I wasn’t going to trash this. I’ll give it this: the movie does redeem itself slightly at the end. Besides the hateful girl, I even liked most of the characters! It’s hard to remain totally spoiler free here but there’s a character who shows up in the last 20 minutes or so who’s easily the best & most interesting thing about Housebound. It would’ve been nice to not sit through the first hour & a half in order to finally get to that, though.

There’s the main girl’s mom. She was pretty cool, actually. And somewhat funny. I guess.

To be a bit spoiler-y again, the movie I heard this compared to after seeing it was Wes Craven’s The People Under The Stairs. Yep, that’s very accurate. So if you love that one, you might want to give this one a shot. I have to say that I never really appreciated Craven’s film but Housebound made me appreciate it more & I now want to re-watch it. As borderline “bad” as The People Under The Stairs was, it was still better & more original than Housebound. I’m going to again sound old but far too many films just rehash old ideas nowadays without adding anything new or entertaining. I’m sick of it. I realize this happened back in my day as well & Craven’s film may also have been ripping something off for all I know but it’s ridiculous how unoriginal everything is now. Maybe people just felt like they were seeing something new & different with Housebound? I don’t know – I think I’m just a grumpy old person who has watched & read way too many things to ever find anything much of a surprise anymore. I’m old & bitter. Get off my damn lawn! You crazy kids. 😉

A creepy teddy bear that really wasn’t very creepy. I think he may have been meant to fulfill the “comedy” bit of this horror comedy.

Summary:

I apologize to those of you who did love this movie! I really can understand the appeal as the overall story is halfway decent and there are some fun & quirky characters. Housebound just didn’t work for me. I found it extremely slow & uninteresting until the very end when things do finally pick up. As for the humor, I admit I’m very picky when it comes to comedy and find very few movies funny. People have such different comedic taste, though, so I can again understand this film’s humor working for some but not for others. However, I don’t think it’s a case of not understanding another country’s humor as I found What We Do In The Shadows to be genuinely funny & clever. Oh well. To each their own! Hopefully I liked Deathgasm more than this one…. You’ll find out tomorrow!

My Rating: 4.5/10

The best character in the film…

**If you’re in the mood for more of my complaining, you can read my recent review of the book The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins HERE. I read it in anticipation of going to the Emily Blunt film that’s out now but I hated the book so much that I think I’ll just wait for Netflix. Have any of you seen the movie? What did you think?