This low-budget Kiwi offering is a rare thing: a horror-comedy with a premise that works both ways. After dynamiting a cashpoint, scowling Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) is placed under house arrest in the home of her micromanaging mother Miriam (Rima Te Wiata); the twist is that this house is – as mum puts it – “prone to certain disturbances”. While we’re waiting for the cause to reveal itself, writer-director-editor Gerard Johnstone gains comic mileage from Kylie’s sullen interactions with those around her, and burrows inventively around his initial, Disturbia-like setup: a ghost story is thus converted into first a hider-in-the-house thriller, then a murder-mystery. Peter Jackson aficionados may recall the overbearing matriarch of 1992’s Braindead, although Te Wiata makes Miriam’s incessant waffling heroic, and the tactics are closer to Jackson’s underrated The Frighteners, developing its characters even as it’s creeping up on them – and us. Johnstone is one to watch.
