When horror works best, it extrapolates very specific human worries and anxieties, and magnifies and mutates them into universal fears that anyone can understand and recoil in terror from. Spin some timely, George Romero-like socio-political issues into that kind of keenly-attuned filmmaking, and you potentially have something incredibly opportune and terrifying on your hands. Which is precisely what writer/director Remi Weekes manages to do with the devastating “His House,” a terrifying examination of what it means to be a dislocated from home—spiritually, physically, emotionally, and otherwise—and uprooted to a strange, unfamiliar place where everyone looks at you with distrust and unease. It’s the refugee and immigration tale, so many people take for granted, but is so anxiety-inducing on so many levels, especially when fleeing hardship.
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“His House” begins with the grueling and horrifying journey that thousands of refugees embark on every single day in order to reach a better life, focusing on a couple and their daughter trying to flee war-torn South Sudan just as insurgents start mowing down people during the country’s ongoing civil war. Right of the bat, Weekes’ gripping film makes it clear the horror in this story is very real, with a bone-chilling scene where a boat carrying helpless refugees capsizes and the piercing screams of innocents about to be drowned out, including the couple’s daughter, chill your core.
In England, we meet the husband (Sope Dirisu) and his wife (Wunmi Mosaku), who have been released from the dirty detention center and given housing after one of the officers condescendingly describes them as “one of the good ones.” They are placed into a hellishly dilapidated apartment, filled with roaches, lights that don’t work, furniture spread around the porch, and mysterious holes in the walls that may house some threatening faces. Of course, no matter squalid the conditions are, the immigration officer in charge of the couple (played by Matt Smith) apathetically dismisses their concerns and says they should be thankful to have such a big place all to themselves.
Weekes brilliant debut, which often tacitly speaks to the lack of empathy people in this plight endure, chillingly observes the effects of dehumanization and disregard, while subverting expectations at every turn. Uncharacteristically, the horror begins in stark, broad daylight, as the couple realizes that they are the only immigrants in the area, and receive death stares from all their creepy neighbors. Weekes acutely explores the hostility immigrants face in their new country and the complexities within the struggle of desperately wanting to assimilate while still trying to hold on to your cultural roots.
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Despite the emotional adversity of this displacement and the anxiety that unwelcomeness breeds, the husband has no intention of returning to unstable South Sudan, so he does everything in his power to assimilate into this new English locale that doesn’t want them. Dirisu brilliantly portrays the trauma of fleeing your home under the worst of circumstances, and the desperation he feels to fit, and there’s a soul-crushing scene where he seeks to change his identity and image by modeling it after very white mannequins on display at a department store. Meanwhile, Mosaku gives an emotional depth that serves as a tragic counterpart to her husband. She faces discrimination wherever she goes, even from British-born Black kids that tell her to go back to Africa. Mosaku communicates so much with so little, chiefly, her conflicted inner struggle—knowing she’s supposed to feel safe in this new home, yet resenting her husband’s quick embrace of a British culture that doesn’t care for them while clinging to her traditions. It’s a psychologically tumultuous household and more than enough to stand on its own as genre-free drama. But this painful humanist texture mirrors the decay and the horror that awaits them each night.
Weekes subversion extends to the idea of the isolated haunted house. This is not the remote countryside where creepy things abound, but a busy, noisy neighborhood where the neighbors are out and about at late hours. While the portrayal of being a refugee in a strange land is scary enough, it’s nothing compared to the terror that awaits inside the apartment when the sun goes down. Shadows eventually come alive, and complex supernatural ghosts begin to personify the survivor’s guilt the protagonists feel.
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Tapping the spirit of both Romero and Wes Craven, Weekes’ brand of panic-inducing horror is razor edge taut in tone, bursting with terrifying moments and monsters that don’t just disappear when the lights are. Also, be on the lookout for yet another chilling performance from Spanish actor Javier Botet (“REC,” “IT“) that will haunt you long after you experience the film.
“His House” will inevitably find comparisons to “Get Out” due to its portrayal of racism in a horror setting, but it’s complexities are different, and obviously satire free. What makes Weekes’ debut so special is the second-half change in antagonists. “His House” starts as an immigration horror and then haunted house tale, and the brings its terror back down to Earth for an outright distressing climax that speaks to the terrible human cost of the refugee crisis. After pulse-pounding, petrifying the first half, the second part of “His House” pulls on your heartstrings with a profoundly humanizing and auspicious story about the frightening nature of escape. [A]
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