You may think you’re tired of haunted house movies. How many times can they tell the same story? While you may be right, I beg you to give this one a chance. His House is the story of a refugee couple that escapes from South Sudan and makes their way to a little English town, only to realize there are horrors of a different kind waiting for them in the new home that they are placed in.
While this is the classic story of a family trying to make it work in a new house while haunted by their past, the story of refugees running from their war-torn home gives it a more real and contemporary feeling. Javier Botet and Wunmi Mosaku give beautiful and heartbreaking performances, and the cinematography’s incredible visuals leave you feeling unsettled.
The film is packed full of genuinely terrifying scenes. I jumped about half a dozen times throughout the film, some of that is due in part to the fact that the girl behind me screamed bloody murder every time something jumped out on screen.
There have been some great foreign horror films in the last few years, and this is definitely one to add to the list if you like a good jump scare (or several.)
Here’s the synopsis for the film:
Many refugee stories end in the same place: a safe (if slightly bewildering) new home. And that’s where His House begins, with a Sudanese couple arriving in a quiet English town for their “happily ever after.” But as their acclimation process falters, we realize that there’s more to blame than cross-cultural misunderstanding. Things begin to go disastrously wrong. “Screaming nightmares” wrong. “Blood magic” wrong. And then, it gets much, much worse.
In his debut film, writer/director Remi Weekes performs a truly stunning feat of genre alchemy. He transforms the sort of real-world atrocities that too many people find ways to ignore into unhinged, capital H Horror. These ghosts are real, and all the more terrifying because of it. Weekes keeps us all on a razor’s edge, aided by stellar cinematography and a brilliant cast, led by Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu.
His House is an honest account of the human cost of the worldwide refugee crisis. It’s also one of the scariest movies you’ll ever see. The true horror is that one leads so naturally into the other.
