“Housebound” was definitely not what I expected it to be. The last third of the movie was actually a lot better than the first two thirds. Spoiler alert: The movie is about a girl with anger issues who gets put under house arrest after trying to rob an atm. The house appears at first to be haunted, but then it gets revealed that there is a benign man living in the walls of the house. All of this is connected to a murder that occurred over a decade ago in that house, though it comes to be shown that it is not the deceased’s spirit is not the problem. 

There’s an interesting theme of being trapped throughout the film. Of course, Kylie is trapped in the house because of her house arrest. Her mother and her mother’s boyfriend are trapped with a verbally (and sometimes physically) abusive daughter. The man inside the walls is trapped because he’s afraid of what will happen if he leaves. The predicted murderer is trapped because of the way he is perceived and other bad things (not murder) that he’s done in the past. The police are trapped in their own arrogance and occasional stupidity. Everyone is trapped somehow and it doesn’t help that there is a sense of claustrophobia throughout the movie that is propagated by the cluttered-ness of several settings. 

The only thing that sets all of these characters free is the eventual demise of the true murderer. The best way to fix a problem is to go to the root. The movie made me really think about ways that I, myself, might be trapped in my life and I feel obligated to discover the cause of my own confinement.