Housebound

 Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O'Reilly) is... Housebound.

 As in: she's sentenced to house arrest for eight months due to a string of petty crimes. Because the judge feels she needs stability, he decides that the sentence is due to be carried out in her mother's house.

 Things don't go well at first; though her mother Miriam (the inestimable Rima Te Wiata, funny as always) welcomes her home, Kylie remains in a passive aggressive funk, choosing to vegetate in a couch watching TV and being generally unpleasant. Her stepfather (Ross Harper) is a shy, retiring man who chooses to stay out of the way.

Notice the cheese grater gauntlet; I love this movie.

 The twist here -the first of many- is that the house turns out to be haunted. Kylie at first rolls her eyes at her mother's stories, but she comes around quickly when a hand grabs her ankle at the basement... and then the craziness starts.
 Not in a Poltergeist sense, mind you; That's the least of the film's insanity.
 When Miriam and Kylie mention their suspicions to Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), the technician in charge of looking after Kylie's ankle monitor, he turns out to be an amateur paranormal investigator; Soon he's setting up the requisite cameras and sensors these type of movies take so much joy in. Some investigation also turns up that there was a murder in the house, and a likely culprit in a next-door neighbour. And then more revelations come, one after another, to overturn everything that was established before.

 Housebound keeps throwing plot developments and pulling the rug out from beneath the viewer with manic abandon, its carefully calibrated, deadpan sense of humor complementing the crazy twists extremely well. It's a horror comedy, but one without any winking whatsoever, relying instead on the ridiculous situations and excellent, very funny characters. Clever and knowingly stupid in equal measure.
 Kylie, for example, is ridiculously competent and badass, at least until the film forces her into a more traditional victim role. But it's a joy to watch a horror heroine who's just as likely to punch the ghost in the face as she is to scream. And Miriam is a delight, a daffy busybody who always has some daft or inane comment at hand but still gets a couple of relatable scenes of exasperation at her daughter's asshattery.
 It is a fucking blast.

 Gerard Johnstone writes, edits and directs. His script is maybe too twisty - you get the feeling that he writes himself into a couple of corners later in the movie, but the tongue-in-cheek tone is well established enough by then for the implausibility not to matter that much. More than anything else it's got a real energy going for it, an unpredictability that keeps you constantly guessing, and just enough grounding to make the payoffs satisfying as well as hugely entertaining.
 There's a remarkable sweetness to the movie as well, grounding Kylie's journey towards not being as much of a dick much better than movies that don't have to juggle a crazy plot like this one, and reserving a surprising amount of empathy even minor characters.

 Aside from the positive buzz, this movie was one of the main reasons I was excited for M3gan last year. It's a shame Johnstone didn't manage to helm any other movies until then, and now he's stuck sequelizing his breakout hit. I'm still looking forward to that, but it'd be good to see him try to walk the line between Sam Raimi and early Peter Jackson again.