Housebound

Kylie Bucknell botches an ATM robbery and is sentenced to eight months of house arrest at her mother Miriam's home. Her stepfather Graeme is placid and accommodating; Miriam is chatty, relentless, and convinced the house is haunted — a belief she has shared on local call-in radio. Kylie wants nothing to do with any of it.

Strange things start happening: sounds inside the walls, objects moving, a presence that doesn't feel like imagination. Kylie's ankle monitor technician, Amos, turns out to be a paranormal enthusiast. He begins investigating and finds that a teenage girl named Rebecca was murdered in the house years earlier, when it was operated as a care facility.

Kylie digs further. The sounds in the walls turn out to be coming from a person — Eugene, a mentally disturbed former patient of the care facility who has been secretly living in the spaces between the walls for years. Eugene is not the threat. She is frightened, damaged, and essentially harmless.

The real secret belongs to Hiles, a family therapist connected to the care facility. He had been sexually abusing Rebecca and killed her when she threatened to expose him, then used his professional position to bury it. As Kylie gets close to the truth, Hiles moves to silence her.

What follows is a violent, increasingly chaotic confrontation in and around the house. Graeme, long underestimated, turns out to be far more capable in a crisis than anyone expected. Eugene fights back. Miriam holds her own. Hiles is killed. Eugene is finally free of the walls. Kylie, who came back to this house wanting nothing from it, leaves it having solved a murder, saved her family, and developed something she'd never admit is affection for them.