His House — a nightmarish take on leaving your home
By: Valentin Antonescu
Tags: Netflix, Halloween, His House, Horror, Refugees

As you might know, the last decade has given us a true horror renaissance in cinema, producing record-breaking successes such as ‘Get Out’, lesser known gems like ‘It Follows’ or cult-classics-to-be like ‘Hereditary’, and Netflix’s new Halloween released horror ‘His House’ is definitely part of this smart-horror-with-something-on-its-mind movement.

Sope Dirisu in a ‘His House’

The film, written and directed by debut long feature filmmaker Remi Weekes, follows a married couple of refugees fleeing South Sudan in search of a better life in England. Bol and Rial Majur (played by Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku, whom you might know from ‘Lovecraft Country’) go through dehumanizing experience after dehumanizing experience in London, from the locals’ treatment to the social workers’ lack of empathy. They are utterly unable (or not really allowed) to adapt to this cold society that was supposed to offer them a second chance after their war torn home country gave them no choice but to leave. More so, their sanity and their relationship are haunted by the spectre of a dead daughter that they lost to the sea on the way to England.

After being granted asylum, they live in the same building with other refugees for a while. At some point a committee decides to move the two of them into their own house, a derelict, bug infested house in a bad neighbourhood, with more rats than functional windows, but they can call it their own. This is where the film introduces its third major character: you guessed it, it’s the house.

At first, Bol and Rial’s life seems to, slowly but surely, fall into a cozy status quo. Bol, optimistic and eager to adapt to western culture, even a little wide eyed, tries to integrate in the community, visits local bars, sings football chants with the men and works hard to turn his new house into a home. Rial, on the other hand, more skeptical in nature, prefers to focus on the negative side of their new community and is more determined than her husband to preserve their original way of life, rather than change it in order to mimic the Western lifestyle.

Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu as Rial and Bol Majur

Their fragile balance, though, is quickly shaken by inexplicable apparitions that they both get inside their house. Voices cry for help, people crawl on the inside of the walls, their daughter, Nyagak, being a recurring presence in their visions. The walls are constantly peeling and degrading, just like the couple’s sanity. The house’s message seems to be nothing short of a lament, a wailing sad and angry at the same time.

Consumed by the maddening visions, Bol’s optimism turns into denial and Rial’s fear turns into decisiveness. He insists on staying, she insists on leaving, even conjuring a story from their native land, something of a parable, more of a cautionary tale, strongly resembling their own story.

The tension accumulates, drop by drop, as their literal and figurative ghosts keep haunting them, until a visually arresting final act emerges with a well executed twist essential to tying the whole thing together. Another major role in the script’s points is played by the scarce, but effective use of flashbacks. Here and there we get glimpses of Bol and Rial’s previous lives, more spoken than shown to us on camera. A bit more of those would have been welcome, because they would have fleshed out even better some already layered characters.

Throughout the whole film, Weekes’ direction constantly gives you the feeling that everything can always go crumbling down for the couple. His shots are claustrophobic and alienating. In the beginning, the camera shows us the husband and wife mostly together, as a whole, ready to face the adversities of adapting to a new culture. As the days go by, Weekes deftly captures the growing schism between them. The camera does not reassure us anymore, it only makes us uneasy.

The script often requires dreamlike direction from Weekes, and he does not disappoint. He is even able to change the whole colour palette and tone of a scene for this purpose. What he does a little excessively and ends up being slightly distracting is rely on haunted house tropes, such as jump scares, for suspense, which could have been obtained more elegantly, maybe through more dialogue. One major point of the film is precisely the fact that this is not a simple haunted house and placing this film into the ‘haunted house’ horror sub-genre would be unfair at best, given its ambition.

Both main actors enter comfortably into their roles. Mosaku plays on Rial’s sadness and pride with grace and nuance, but the one who truly shines is Dirisu as the ever hopeful Bol. His performance’s highlights aren’t the moments of introspection, when he walks the line of fear and denial, although those impress too, but rather his rare moments of curiosity, his interactions with the English people he so desperately wants to emulate. The film’s biggest star power comes with Matt Smith’s Mark, the social worker responsible for the two of them. His role is small, but at a certain moment, even has a little depth.

There are two other unexpected highlights that turn the film from a good psychological horror into a great one. The first one is the outstanding sound editing: the house’s sounds are creeping up on you until they become overwhelming, always aggravating the characters’ reactions and elevating the acting. The second remarkable feat of the production team is the way the house itself was built to always reflect the characters’ states.

‘His House’ might seem at first glance that it has a political agenda, but it does not. It is a harrowing view at the true face of the refugee experience, it does show us how forced change can rear its ugly head and take everything you have, but just because it’s horrifyingly real it doesn’t mean its intents are political in any way. The story is a personal one, about people’s duties to their communities.

With the aforementioned new wave of horror came, of course, a new wave of horror directors, young and already set to become classic figures of the genre, such as Jordan Peele and Ari Aster. Whether or not Remi Weekes will become part of this club we will probably find out with his future cinematic efforts. Right now, after his calculated, but energetic, yet imperfect debut effort, he seems to be on an even better track: finding his own voice. Rating -4/5.