His House (2020)

NOVEMBER 6, 2020

GENRE: GHOST
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

A friend of mine said she had to stop watching His House one night because it was scaring her too much, which obviously piqued my interest since she was hardly a horror novice. If it was say, my sister, who can't even handle commercials for mainstream horror movies, it'd mean nothing, but a legit horror fan getting to the "had to stop it until later" point? That's something that demands my attention! So I dove in before the positive word of mouth left it with insurmountable expectations, and also before I had a chance to know much about it. I could assume from the title that a house was involved, but that's all I knew when I sat down.

Luckily, my friend wasn't being a dork - there are a couple of top-notch rattlers in the first half hour or so, particularly one that reminded me of the classic "angry stomping ghost is now inside the room" bit from the original Insidious. There aren't as many in the latter half of the film though, as the traditional scares are phased out in favor of some more true life horrors and an intriguing but not particularly frightening specter that ultimately serves as the antagonist. So if you're like my pal and feel that if the first 30 minutes are this scary the rest must be unbearable, relax! You've already cleared the scariest parts

The film centers on Rial (Wunmi Mosaku from Citadel, with which this shares some DNA) and Bol (Sope Dirisu), a pair of Sudanese refugees who have been granted temporary asylum in a rather rundown neighborhood outside of London. They are given meager means to live on and seemingly can't even blink wrong or they get tossed back to Sudan, but they seem relieved all the same. But it's hardly paradise; the house they are given is apparently bigger than normal (some of the case workers note that it's bigger than their own, though it seems like it'd get cramped with a few kids, at least to my eyes) but it's a dump - the front door falls off when they enter for the first time, and the previous tenants left them a maggot-filled pizza on the floor, for example. And worse: there's a ghost!

But it's clear that this isn't a coincidental haunting; the ghost is clearly after them specifically, and only a very dim person would fail to recognize that it has something to do with their daughter, who fell overboard as they made their way across the Mediterranean Sea (along with several other refugees). A series of flashbacks reveal some of the more unsettling parts of their journey, as well as what prompted their escape in the first place, which carries with it a rather shocking reveal that recontextualizes a lot of what we've seen and also why the couple seems to be estranged in the present. It doesn't help that Bol makes efforts to fit in (there's a bit where he buys a shirt he sees on a poster and wears it frequently throughout the film in an attempt to blend) while Rial wants to keep with their customs and remnants of their old life, which Bol thinks might be the source of the haunting.

Long story short there's a lot going on here beyond the usual haunted house stuff; it would actually be fairer to label the film as a drama with some supernatural elements, akin to something like The Eclipse (another one with a banger of a jump scare!) or the recent Relic than Poltergeist or whatever traditional horror movies Netflix will undoubtedly lump it in with. I don't say that as a knock, merely a heads up to adjust your expectations, because at first I found myself getting a bit bored waiting for the scary stuff to ramp up (armed with my friend's "too scary to watch in one sitting" reminder) until I realized that it wasn't really the point. Outside of the aforementioned jolts - which you may or may not even react to - the true scariest part of the movie isn't supernatural related at all. No, it's a flashback where armed militia types massacre a gathering where Rial was present, where she only survived by hiding among her dead friends. In one quick moment we realize that such occurrences aren't out of the ordinary there, hence why they needed to escape. The ghost was actually an improvement.

That said even on a dramatic level it sometimes feels a bit stretched out to hit the 90 minute mark. There are occasional instances of issues with their neighbors (Rial is even mocked and given a "go back where you came from," from a Black youth no less), and Bol seemingly makes a few friends when he goes to a bar to watch a soccer (well, football - it's a UK film!) game, but neither of these things are expanded beyond those respective scenes. Matt Smith pops up in a few scenes as their case worker, but each appearance just had me wondering why they weren't just immediately tossed out of the UK again. In an early scene we are given the impression that they are barely given more "freedom" than prisoners, akin to a parolee having to abide by certain restrictions or else they will be thrown back in jail, but despite tearing their house apart and acting totally crazy (Bol crushes a glass in his hand during one of his visits) they never seem to be in any danger of being removed. If these scenes were just removed, we could assume they hadn't had to check in or something, instead I kept wondering why they were being given so much leeway, which rings false. But hey, now Doctor Who is in the movie, which probably helps it get noticed.

So it's a bit uneven, but overall is definitely worth a watch, and an intriguing debut for director Remi Weekes (who wrote the script along with Felicity Evans and Toby Venables). He gets fantastic performances from his two leads, proves to be an ace with transitions (via a few of Bol's nightmares) and most importantly, doesn't settle for just the usual haunting tropes. I kept thinking that this would have been a perfect "Fantastic Fest movie", in that it took a standard premise and then made something more unique and daring with it, which is kind of a tradition with their selections. And it's probably something I'd enjoy even more a second time around, which is always a plus and truly rare for a genre film.

What say you?

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