Dennis (Housebound)

Dennis is the main antagonist in the New Zealand dark comedy horror film Housebound. Dennis was played by Cameron Rhodes.

Origin
He is a counselor for juvenile delinquents who is assigned to Kylie's case. He has also been assigned to numerous other cases before and apparently worked in Kylie's house for an older case.

Biography
Kylie is a young woman who got arrested after a failed bank robbery. Because of her history of drugs and theft, she has been sentenced to house arrest and is given an ankle bracelet which the local cop, Amos, says will alert police if she steps outside the house boundaries. As one could imagine, Kylie is very pissed off about all this.

Over the next few weeks, Kylie becomes aware of odd events in the house, such as eerie footsteps from the attic, lights going off by themselves, and to top it all off a hand grabs her in the basement from under a shelf. Also, her toy teddy bear seemingly comes alive in a thunderstorm and apparently attacks her before she burns it but it returns in the shower and she stomps it and apparently kills it. Kylie tells Amos of the apparent paranormal activity but although he does an investigation asking the "ghost" to state its business, no one answers. Miriam, Kylie's mother, becomes convinced its haunted.

Dennis appears for the first time in one of Kylie's counselling sessions. He is a very slimy and conceited individual and he openly laughs at her idea of ghosts. He says the mind plays tricks on people and she only sees what she expects. He says that her active imagination in an inactive environment can run wild and this is the cause of all the apparent hauntings.

When searching the Internet Kylie finds her own house was a halfway house and that her own room was apparently the same room where a young girl, Elizabeth, was brutally stabbed to death. Kylie believes Elizabeth is the ghost haunting her. Amos and Kylie become obsessed with the apparent psychotic neighbour, an old man who sits round and skins rabbits all day, so Kylie and Amos break into his house to find his dentures because Amos believes if they match police records the neighbour may have killed Elizabeth. The attempt fails humorously. When Amos returns to find the missing dentures he actually meets the neighbour himself, who is actually friendly and tells Amos about the past history of the halfway house next door. He says that he adopted a feral man, Eugene, and that Eugene disappeared at the same time of the murders. The neighbour believes Eugene is responsible.

When her stepfather Graeme returns home, Kylie accidentally stabs him believing him to be the "mad" neighbour.

Dennis returns for more counselling sessions and says Kylie is getting worse. He says that she could be a danger to herself and her mother and he recommends her be put under new treatment. When Dennis is there, a blackout takes place, when a white-shrouded figure is standing right beside Dennis when the lights come back on, then another blackout takes place ending up with Dennis being stabbed by a possible paranormal assailant.

When Dennis is taken away to hospital, the situation gets weirder as Kylie finds a feral man - Eugene - watching TV through a crack in her kitchen wall. She is terrified and Eugene seemingly breaks out and attacks her, but she escapes to the police station. None of the police believe her having to file a report, with the receptionist only believing Kylie put the broom away in the cupboard. Kylie also meets Amos in the police station, however, who convinces officers its true and her mother is in possible danger.

The police return to the house and Miriam was minutes away from meeting Eugene when she opens the door to find a whole crowd of policemen and Kylie in the doorway.

Dennis is summoned again, and he convinces Kylie that she is fabricating the whole event. When Dennis retrieves a mouth plate from inside his mouth which ends up becoming bloody, Kylie remembers that the man who killed Elizabeth also had a metal plate in his mouth. Kylie knows Dennis is the killer and gets Miriam to chat up Dennis, which fails, and keep a watch on where he goes. Dennis apparently goes to the men's bathroom with the policeman, but is revealed to have murdered the policeman by stabbing him to death. Dennis then is confronted by Kylie, who has a knife, and says that she knows Dennis killed Elizabeth years ago when he was on work experience, because she found his name on a list of old police records stating he was employed by them back then.

Kylie is about to tackle Dennis but then Dennis suddenly goes hostile and races at them and a lengthy fight begins. Kylie and Miriam trap Dennis in a wastepaper basket and he hacks through the bathroom door with a chainsaw, echoing Jack Torrance's infamous scene in The Shining. In a brief interlude, Kylie and Miriam find the corpse of the policeman in the bathroom, finding Dennis stabbed him in the back. Then they meet Eugene who is actually a shy introvert. He says he feared being blamed for Elizabeth's murder so that's why he didn't tell police abot it and he was the one who stabbed Dennis by dressing as a ghost. Eugene has also been drawing really good pictures documenting Kylie's life in his eyes. When Eugene says he knows a place they can hide he dresses as a ghost and hides himself.

Dennis chases Kylie and Miriam up to the roof and tackles them on the chimney pot but then he apparently dies when he falls off to the road beneath.

Amazingly, he survives and he enters the kitchen and knocks Kylie unconscious. When he is about to strangle Miriam to death, Eugene awakens Kylie and she frees Miriam. Kylie attaches a cord to Dennis' throat. Eugene is in the basement and he has the boiler connected to the lead. Dennis' head finally blows up; he gives a cruel smirk before this happens.

Seven months later, Eugene is now the household electrician and Amos removes Kylie's ankle bracelet for the first time.