Kylie (Housebound)

"She doesn't have THAT much imagination"

- Kylie to Amos about her mother

"It's called CHILDHOOD."

- Kylie disregards the paranormal forces her mother believes in

Kylie is the main protagonist of the 2014 horror film Housebound. She was played by Morgana O'Reilly.

Origins
Kylie came from a rural house outside a massive city in New Zealand. Her father was presumably dead and she had a stepfather called Graeme. Her mother was called Miriam who Kylie did not get on with. She had been a difficult child and had been expelled from school. Also she decided to leave home for good and pursue a life of crime. She turned to drugs and theft, and armed robbery. Eventually one of her missions (the one at the start of the film) backfired on her with her colleague dead and herself arrested when her car stopped working.

Biography
Kylie was bought before court after her arrest for the bank robbery and the judge looked over her past history of drugs and violent assaults. He recommended she was too dangerous for rehabilitation or police so he kept her prisoner in her own home. Kylie learned to loathe the police and the judge who had sentenced her to such a humiliating punishment.

Kylie did have one good police ally, a man named Amos, who was her guardian and counselor. He assigned an ankle bracelet to her ankle, which would beep and alert police if she left her house. She had been assigned to her childhood home which she hated. Kylie grew morose and depressed quickly in her house and took to apparently eating all the food in her larder, to her mother's dismay.

Over the next few weeks of her imprisonment, odd things began happening in the house, such as the lights going off by themselves, food going missing from the pantry when Kylie was in and hadn't touched it, and to top it all her teddy bear apparently became possessed during a thunderstorm and attacked Kylie, who threw it in the fire in a rage, because she had previously told her mother that childhood was the time for believing in the supernatural and that such things were ridiculous. Kylie was showering the next day when the bear apparently returned and attacked her, but she stomped on it and apparently beat it to death.

When Amos came, he saw the bear had a tape inserted into it saying the same thing over and over. Nonetheless, when a hand grabbed Kylie's ankle from the dark in the basement, Miriam told Amos there was a ghost in the house. Amos took interest and asked the spirit if it had been murdered or what its business was here. Nobody answered. Kylie took this as confirmation the supernatural was preposterous.

Later, Kylie and Amos became obsessed with the neighbour who was apparently insane and lived a Redneck life. He had been skinning possums in his yard and he was clearly armed. When she had been searching the Internet, Kylie found her house had been a halfway house which had a young girl named Elizabeth brutally stabbed to death in Kylie's own bedroom. Miriam had known of the secret all along but believed it was best if Kylie didn't know.

Kylie believed the mad neighbour had something to do with the murders and she contacted Amos and suggested they break into the neighbour's house to retrieve his teeth because the man who killed Elizabeth had a mouth plate and if the neighbour's false teeth had that too then maybe he did it. Kylie suggested she be the one to break into the house and she showed her courage by sneaking in. However, when she got to the sleeping man, she couldn't bring herself to reach into his mouth, and when she did, he humorously spat out his false teeth then she fled out of there. Amos got stuck in a bear trap and Kylie ran back to help him and the neighbour ran out with a gun. When Amos was freed, he returned to the neighbour's house himself to have a look for the dentures he left behind but the man himself appeared, seemingly trying to kill Amos, but the man was actually friendly and he showed Amos round the place and took him on a tour of the halfway house's history. He said that he had adopted a feral man named Eugene and that Eugene had disappeared at the time of Elizabeth's murder. The neighbour believed Eugene may have been responsible.

Throughout all this, Kylie had a series of visits from her slimy counselor, Dennis, who was all obsessed with science and believed Kylie to have a mental disorder which made her imagine the "paranormal" activity despite evidence that Kylie was otherwise sane.

Kylie accidentally stabbed Graeme, her stepfather, when he returned home, believing him to be the "insane" neighbour.

When Dennis was back round for another counseling session, he professed belief Kylie was getting worse and needed therapy, but then a blackout happened. Dennis remained remarkably calm throughout, almost bored, but then a white shrouded figure with a knife appeared before Dennis when the lights flickered back on. In a final blackout, the figure vanished and when the lights came back on Dennis had been stabbed by a possible paranormal assailant.

As Dennis was taken to hospital, Kylie was suspected to have stabbed him, as the police noticed she said "Shut the fuck up Dennis" but Kylie said she left the room just then. To her rage, the police treated her like a little girl by ordering her to get her mother to talk with them.

When Kylie was at home again in the kitchen, she actually found Eugene through a gap in her kitchen cupboard, watching TV. To Kylie's horror, Eugene broke out of his secret room and seemingly tried to attack her but Kylie managed to get down to the police station. None of the police believed her story of a madman living in her house, but fortunately Amos was there to back her up and he encouraged police to get down to the house right then.

In the house, Miriam was minutes away from meeting Eugene but then she was interrupted by a knock at the door. Outside was a whole crowd of policemen and Kylie.

Dennis got summoned again and he expressed his belief that Kylie was a danger to herself and others and needed locking up. However, when he was talking, Kylie saw Dennis had a metal plate in his mouth, which he removed and then replaced, leaving his mouth bloody. Kylie remembered that whoever killed Elizabeth had a metal plate and that Dennis may have killed her. Kylie grabbed Miriam and pulled her out of the room, then asked her to chat up Dennis while Kylie went over the police records because she suspected Dennis was the killer. When Miriam's attempt at chatting up Dennis failed humorously when Dennis went to the bathroom with the other policeman and stabbed him to death, Kylie found her theory was right, because Dennis' name did come up on the old police records, showing he was employed by them in work experience.

Kylie got out with Miriam but Dennis returned from the bathroom. He was confused when Kylie expressed that he killed Elizabeth years ago, but he dropped his guise suddenly and got hostile. He ran at them with a knife with which he had killed the policeman and Miriam got him trapped in a waste paper basket. He chased them throughout the house and even sliced open the bathroom door with a chainsaw, echoing Jack Torrance's famous scene from The Shining.

In a brief interlude when Kylie escaped from Dennis, she and Miriam found Eugene hiding in the secret room. Miriam got sympathetic with Eugene because he was mentally ill. However Kylie got wrathful and blamed Eugene for Elizabeth's death until he confessed he was a shy introvert. Kylie got softer with Eugene upon seeing he had documented her life in a series of amazing paintings. When Kylie asked Eugene why he didn't tell police of Elizabeth's murder, Eugene confessed it was because he thought they'd blame him. When Kylie said they needed to hide from Dennis, Eugene said he knew of such a place and proved it by dressing up as a ghost and sitting down on a box.

Dennis found Kylie and Miriam when they got on the roof and Kylie hid behind the chimney pot but almost fell off. However, Dennis fell to his apparent death.

When Kylie got back in the bathroom with her mother Dennis reappeared, amazingly still alive, and tried to use the phone to strangle Miriam after brutally knocking Kylie unconscious. This went on for awhile until Eugene woke up Kylie, who threw Dennis a lead Eugene had passed to her and attached it to Dennis' throat. Then down in the basement Eugene flicked the boiler switch, which ignited, and Dennis' head finally blew up, but not before he let out a cruel smirk.

Seven months later, Kylie and Miriam were back to normal, and Eugene had been employed by Miriam as the house electrician. Kylie was said to be looking much happier than before. Amos undid Kylie's ankle bracelet for the first time.

Personality
Kylie was often the voice of reason in her family, especially with her mother, who would jump to believe that a falling frying pan was a ghost attack. Kylie dismissed the paranormal as the work of a child, and she was resolute in her belief yet disturbed as the events grew larger. However, she remained adamant throughout that it wasn't a ghost, and she was proven right by the missing food, found to be Eugene's work instead. Kylie was a very likeable person once one got to know her. She could be rude and obnoxious to strangers and authority, but once past that aspect, she was a genuine and protective individual who could fight for those she loved. She got shocked by Dennis' sudden breakdown and his attack on her and thus she only fought back when she needed to.

Kylie's worst fear was being trapped in her own house which did happen, but she was strong enough to face through it and she won out in the end.