Even before anything supernatural happens to them, the main characters of Remi Weekes’ debut feature His House have endured plenty of horrors. The movie opens with quick flashes of Bol (Gangs of London's Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Lovecraft Country’s Wunmi Mosaku) escaping their home of war-ravaged South Sudan along with their young daughter. They flee on foot, via truck and then via boat, where rough waters throw many of the refugees overboard and the couple’s child is lost. They arrive in the U.K., but when the movie begins, they’re being held in a detention center, their fate at the mercy of cold bureaucrats who are considering their application for asylum.
Even after they catch a break, being released on bail while their application is still under review, they’re treated with disdain by the case worker (Matt Smith) who warns them to "be one of the good ones," and they’re set up in a decrepit public housing unit infested with rats and bugs, with failing electricity and a front door literally falling off the hinges. It’s hardly the auspicious start to a new life they were hoping for. As rough and dehumanizing as the refugee experience can be, though, the movie’s main horrors don’t come from the intolerance that the couple faces in England. Instead, they’re haunted by an entity that has followed them from their home country.
At first, it seems like they’re trapped in a standard-issue haunted house since the terms of their release don’t allow them to live anywhere else. Weekes throws in the familiar elements of a horror-movie haunting, from sudden loud noises to ominous apparitions in the background. Both Bol and Rial start seeing manifestations of their dead daughter, and initially it seems possible they are just suffering from PTSD exacerbated by the mostly hostile treatment they’ve received.
But the visions and visitations become more intense with more significant tangible effects, and Rial becomes convinced they’re being targeted by what she calls a "night witch," a demon that is tormenting them as punishment for leaving their home. She insists they must go back, while Bol doubles down on his determination to stay, doing his best to fit in even as a white security guard follows him closely while he shops for clothes and the couple’s white neighbor taunts him with the prediction that they’ll be gone in a week. Bol dresses like a local, uses utensils instead of eating with his hands in the traditional way and sings along with soccer fans at a local pub. He even burns items the couple brought with them from South Sudan, but none of that appeases the increasingly angry spirit.
Although Bol and Rial continue to experience difficulties adjusting to their new surroundings, the story gradually shifts focus to the past, making the movie less about the treatment of refugees in England and more about what the couple had to do to escape South Sudan. Like fellow Sundance 2020 premiere Amulet, His House uses the plight of refugees as a jumping-off point for a more internal horror story, one that is more about guilt and redemption than racism or xenophobia. Those latter elements are still present, and they’re ultimately inescapable for Bol and Rial, but they’re also not the main source of terror for them in their new home.
That makes His House a little less effective as social commentary, although it still has some striking moments that highlight the stark divide between Bol and Rial and the people they’re now living among. When Rial gets lost wandering around their labyrinthine neighborhood soon after they arrive, she deliberately approaches a group of Black teenagers to ask for help, presumably expecting a sympathetic reaction from them; but they mock her just as mercilessly as anyone else, yelling at her to go back to Africa. Case workers make passive-aggressive remarks that the dump where Bol and Rial are staying is bigger than their own houses, revealing their resentment that refugees are given anything at all, no matter how shabby.
Most of the horrors are contained within the house, though, and Weekes stages a number of terrifying moments as the line between reality and dreams, and between past and present, blurs for Bol and Rial. In one of the most indelible moments, the camera pulls back from Bol sitting at the kitchen table eating to reveal just a section of the house, now floating adrift in the ocean. Faces of the dead appear in holes in the decaying walls, and Bol strips off all the wallpaper and then bashes more holes in the walls in an attempt to get rid of them. Ghosts of dead refugees lunge at him in the dark, only to disappear when the electric lights finally turn on, like the villain in David F. Sandberg’s Lights Out.
His House may be more effective as an old-fashioned ghost story than as a work of politically aware horror, although its final moments make strong visual statements about the legacy of suffering that follows all refugees to new countries. Dirisu and Mosaku demonstrate the sheer will and inner strength required to make it through these ordeals, and the characters remain sympathetic even after a third-act twist reveals potentially devastating information about them. The evil specters of the past must be reckoned with in order to face the even more uncertain dangers of the real-world future.
Starring Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku and Matt Smith, His House premieres Friday, Oct. 30 on Netflix.