Director: Remi Weekes
Writers: Felicity Evans , Toby Venables
Stars: Bradley Banton, Mevis Birungi, Javier Botet
A refugee couple from Sudan is given asylum in the U.K. where they have a second chance at a new life. The husband (Sope Dirisu) is insistent on moving away from the past and acclimating him and his wife (Wunmi Mosaku) into the house given to them by the government representative (Matt Smith) who refers to the couple as being ‘one of the good ones’. But there is an evil beneath the walls of this house that has come to haunt this couple, and adjusting to a new life might be impossible as they are tormented by this evil entity. ‘His House’ takes a unique perspective of the life of a refugee and brings some real terror, and I had a really good time watching it!
The uniqueness of the story is by far the thing that grabbed me when I first started watching. Seeing the look on the husband’s face when he is told he can leave the refugee detainment center will break your heart. The beginning does give you snippets of what their experience was like escaping from Sudan but leave most of the context to expand on throughout the film. We take so many things for granted living in a first world country, and ‘His House’ does a fantastic job of giving you an immersive experience into that experience. The other distinctive features in ‘His House’ comes from the style and feel of its horror elements. Sure there are familiar jump scares that any horror fan would know, but there are genuine surprises and unsettling imagery that scared the crap out of me.
Another great thing about this film is the acting. Both leads are terrific in the film and are bound to have fruitful careers. I loved their chemistry and believed all of the scary moments they were in. The director Remi Weekes is excellently weaving the fear throughout the film that doesn’t make it feel uneven and ramps up in the third act to a moment that left my jaw dropped. There are unreliable narrators in the film that makes the tension and drama unsuspecting and earned. The cinematography of the house scenes and making it feel claustrophobic, even though Matt Smith’s character insists that the couple’s house is ‘bigger than his own’. The anxiety of not ‘confirming’ to the society they are now immersed in is also a clever real-world horror that only intensifies the calmer parts of the film.
Do not sleep on this movie because it’s a ‘streaming’ film, It not only is important for people to see and understand a different life than their own, but it may be the best horror film of the month, perhaps even year so far.
I’m giving ‘His House’ a 8.5/10