His House (2020)

A power-house debut from Remi Weekes, deftly balancing social commentary with old school horror (and for once, without zombies). The movie pulls you inside the life of a Sudanese refugee couple assigned to an apartment in London after a harrowing escape via boat from their home country. In addition to the nightmare of their experience, they’ve got a potential poltergeist. Movies often face-plant while struggle to convey what is real, a dream, a backstory, or something else. "His House" weaves these shifts expertly. And you will not see the twist coming in the last act. Here's hoping Remi Weekes joins Ari Aster and Robbert Eggers, bringing horror to a new level of intellectual freakiness.

A glimpse of the horrors faced by refugees escaping war-torn countries for a better life in Britain is provocatively probed in this stylish supernatural horror film from talented writer-director Remi Weekes. unexpectedly blends the anxiety, confusion and alienation felt by a pair of asylum seekers from South Sudan with a nightmarish malevolence born from dark magic and folklore. [_Read my full review on _].

When "Bol" (Sope Dirisu) and his wife "Rial" (Wunmi Mosaku) arrive in the UK after fleeing their war-torn home in South Sudan, they are given leave to remain whilst their case is further investigated, and housed in an ordinary - if a bit run down - housing estate. Helped by their case worker "Mark" (Matt Smith) they are given the basic essentials to get by, but as their stay becomes more extended they struggle to fit into a community that is at best disinterested, at worst a bit hostile - all whilst they start to believe that their new home is possessed! Things quite literally start going bump in the night and the couple begin to wonder if this has something to do with their ancestors, or perhaps the spirits of the folks they left behind to face the uncertainty. It's those last scenarios that we see expressed through dreams and flashbacks and that give us a clue as to just what horrors they escaped. Question is, though: are there now even greater horrors here for them now? At times this can be quite a compelling look at the psychology of people caught between two stools. Not fitting where they now are, not fitting where they once were. The cultural challenges they face now, though, aren't really developed and I found the characterisation of the ultra-tolerant "Mark" a little hard to believe, especially as the hunt for their ethereal nemesis starts to manifest itself in ways that become a little too surreal. Indeed, that's maybe the problem with this. It's trying to combine social and political points, but there's nowhere near enough punch from the dialogue and any message is bogged down in a confused hybrid of their supernatural experiences and the reality of their new British life. It can't have had much of a budget but that needn't have mattered had director Remi Weekes focussed more on keeping the story tight and on developing the characters a little more. It invites us to sympathise based on what he presumes are our own moral standards rather than present us with anything or anybody that's especially interesting. As ever, Smith completely underwhelms and though Mosaku offers us some emotional oomph, the rest of this is disappointingly unremarkable.