“Your ghosts follow you. They never leave. They live with you. It’s when I let them in, I could start to face myself.”
This is a quote from Bol Majur (Sope Dirisu), the main character in the movie His House, Written and directed by Remi Weekes. The quote by Bol sums up the meaning of His House. Although there are other topics addressed in the movie, His House is a fresh take on the haunted house spooker.
Bol and Rial (his wife) are refugees, recently escaped from a violence-torn Sudan. They fought their way to get to the U.K., traveling on foot for many miles avoiding men with assault rifles at every turn, pushing and shoving (ultimately lying) to get on the last bus out of town, and finally on a boat to cross the tumultuous sea.
It is during the last section of their voyage where tragedy strikes hard at the 30+ refugees trying to reach asylum. Many lives are lost at sea, including someone very dear to the Majur couple, on which the movie focuses.
As the movie begins, Bol and Rial are being upgraded from a detention facility to individual housing, set up by the immigration system in the U.K. As I mentioned, His House takes a look at topics other than a haunting. One of which is the immigration system in the U.K. for refugees like the Majurs. His House portrays this institution as flawed. The socio-economic take on the U.K.’s handling of the expatriates from Sudan is condescension and disdain. Some of the employees at the detention facility complain that the house Bol and Rial are receiving are bigger than their own houses. However, to look at their new home, one would immediately see the deterioration and harsh conditions supersede the size of the living quarters.
There’s a lot of this message in the first act of His House and is interlaced throughout the entire movie. We also see how the locals, even if the same color of skin, treat the emigrants as unwanted vermin. Bol and Rial are given a short leash with their new home and a small stipend on which to survive.
Bol is determined to embrace their new situation as it is a tremendous upgrade from their dangers in Sudan, in his eyes. To the immigrant officer who oversees their case, Mark (played by Matt Smith), Bol says “We are good people…” And it seems so at first. We discover later that Bol was determined to do whatever it took to get himself and Rial to safety, even if it meant doing something awful to achieve that. Rial doesn’t acclimate to their new life right away and seems to clutch to their prior culture, resisting the ways of their new country.
I would say that the secondary horror being represented in His House is this topic of the refugees trying to adapt in a new country, where it appears nobody wants them there.
In the forefront, though, are the haunts from the supernatural. Bol and Rial narrowly escaped one horror only to face another abhorrence in their new home. We find that they are being haunted by an ‘apeth’ witch. Also known as a night witch. An apeth comes from Sudanese Dinka folklore which tells of a witch that works their supernatural powers in darkness. This is where a lot of the spooks and scares in His House occurs. When Bol turns on the lights the ghosts/haunts disappear. Turn them back off and the ghost is directly in front of Bol reaching out for him. Some really good scenes came from following this particular piece of the folklore.
The apeth witch’s intentions is to exploit the couple’s guilt that has followed them from the tragedy on the boat. It wants to bring the trauma they both harbor, from barely escaping the ethnic cleansing, to the surface of their everyday life. Its malicious acts are an attempt to disrupt Bol and Rial’s relationship and turn them against each other. And ultimately, the apeth tries to convince them to give up their lives.
Through a creative way of revealing it, the twist in His House explains the specific reason why the apeth witch has attached itself to the couple and torments them. It wants to do a trade for Bol’s life for something he did during their escape, at the same time trying to convince Rial that Bol is dangerous and that she must take his life for the witch. The couple must fight for their lives as the temptation to yield to the wishes of the apeth witch grow stronger.
Although His House uses some typical techniques of a ghostly horror movie, it was a different take on the boogeyman through its story, character development, and unraveling of the past, including the cool twist near the end. Remi Weekes did a good job of getting the film’s messages across while providing good scares through phycological terror and torment. Those messages were the hardships of reugees in a new land, but mostly what Bol says, “your ghosts follow you”. The acting was brilliant in His House, as was the writing.
Hell, Rotten Tomatoes has His House at 100% on the Tomatometer. I think this is worth a watch and feel like it was really well done from top to bottom.
Hope you enjoy it too!
His House
Released: 10/30/2020
Rating: TV-14
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Director: Remi Weekes (First full-length movie)
Writer: Remi Weekes (Screenplay - First full-length movie), Felicity Evans (First full-length movie)
Stars:
Sope Dirisu (Gangs of London, Humans, The Huntsman: Winter’s War)
Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country Series, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
Matt Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Upcoming Morbius movie 2021)
IMDB Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%!!
Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 75%
Metascore: 72 out of 100
Streamable on these Apps with subscription at time of Blog Post: Netflix Only
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