His House
Ratings: 3.5/5
Duration: 01 Hr 33 Mins
Director: Remi Weekes
Writer: Felicity Evans, Toby Venables, Remi Weekes
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Release Date: 30 October 2020
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Star Cast: Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Matt Smith, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba, Javier Botet, Bradley Banton, Mevis Birungi, Vivien Bridson, Yvonne Campbell, Gamba Cole, Rene Costa, Andy Gathergood, Mark Gooden, Marie Hamm, Ty Hurley, Nasir Jama, Cornell John, John Kamau, John Samuel Kande, Rasaq Kukoyi, Kevin Layne,
Swaylee Loughnane, Lola May, Kofi Ossei, Robert Ryan, Vivienne Soan, Emily Taaffe, Homer Todiwala, Matt Townsend, Gillian Vassilliou, Scott Michael Wagstaff, Lee Westwick
Plot: The film ‘His House’ opens with a couple - Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Moskau) from war-torn South Sudan (North Africa), who have become refugees in the London suburbs (England). They are the lucky ones who manage to get released as asylum seekers in the search of actual citizenship. However, they are assigned with a strict set of rules and guidelines, by a detention board who is overseeing their case, where one slip up could land them back in Sudan.
The place they get to stay is nightmarishly dirty with mysterious holes in the walls, roaches, strange voices, and lights that don’t turn on! And they are told, this is the best a government can do. On top of that, the couple seems to be the only immigrants in the neighbourhood, and each time they step outside, they get death glares.
What they are seeing is the result of their trauma or is the house genuinely haunted by a malevolent force, forms the story.
Review: British writer-director Remi Weekes with a ‘haunted house’ has taken a familiar horror setting but has given it a powerful tropical angle. ‘His House’ is the kind of confident debut that from start-to-finish feels like beholding a major new vision in horror. The director knows that a viewer can get familiar with a type of horror presence, so accordingly, he has worked towards creating a different horrifying concept in his second half.
The film is also about a marriage, which becomes strained because of a cultural disconnect. By focusing on the emotional aspects, the director has painted a rich portrait of the migrant experience, accounting for the inseparable nostalgia for home and the impulse to conform and cut ties with the past. However, he slightly loses sight of Bol and Rial in favour of supernatural entities that aren’t nearly as terrifying as the grief these characters have felt.
Nevertheless, the film might sound like something you have seen a million times, but the cultural point of view is tilt-shifted enough to make it engrossing!
Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku have given superbly terrified performances; especially when their grief, guilt, shame, and trauma come to life in physical form. Their wildly different performances not only complement each other but constantly pull each other into their orbits.
Technically, the film is great as the cinematographer Jo Willems has wonderfully composed the evening scenes. Even the efforts put in by the sound design team are impressive - something that will make the viewers' knuckles turn white!
Overall, ‘His House’ isn’t just impressive, it is an enormous emotional punch, which also provides some of the best scares going this spooky season. And that, in itself, is an achievement!
