Written and directed by Gerard Johnstone, Housebound is a New Zealand horror comedy that follows a troubled young woman named Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O’Reilly) who is arrested after an ill fated attempt to steal the safe of an ATM machine. As she has a criminal record already the judge decides to sentence Kylie to house arrest for eight months under the care of her mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata). Kylie has a fractured relationship with her mother and step-father Graeme (Ross Harper) and is even more annoyed by the ankle tag she has to wear, which she is informed by Security Contractor Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), will alert the Police if she leaves the house.
As her stay begins Kylie becomes embarrassed and frustrated when Miriam phones into a radio talk show to discuss her house being haunted. Later a hand grabs Kylie’s ankle in the basement but she insists it must be an intruder and nothing supernatural. This incident alerts Amos as the ankle tag sends out an alert. Amos arrives and sides with Miriam that the house id haunted and that must f been what set the ankle tag off. Kylie gets even more annoyed at this. As it turns out, Amos is actually a bit of a ghost hunter and goes to get all his equipment to investigate. Kylie gets even more annoyed!
A series of unexplained events unfold, including the involvement of a robot teddy bear, and Kylie begins to consider that her Mother may actually be right but then, just to confuse matters further, Kylie’s court assigned clinical psychologist Dennis (Cameron Rhodes) arrives to check on Kylie he becomes concerned that both Kylie and Miriam are delusional. Then later Graeme reveals to Kylie that their home was once a halfway house and the site of a horrific murder. What else could possibly happen?
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