His House

“Your ghosts follow you. They never leave. They live with you. It's when I let them in, I could start to face myself.”

Filmology Rating: 3 out of 4

His House is in your house thanks to Netflix. This is from Remi Weekes who makes his directorial debut.

A refugee couple makes a harrowing escape from war-torn South Sudan, but then they struggle to adjust to their new life in an English town that has an evil lurking beneath the surface.

Having gone into this film preparing myself for the supernatural elements of the film, I have to say that as the film went along I got frustrated at how often the horror elements got in the way of an interesting drama.

This film is actually like 'Vivarium' quite a bit -- which is another film that came out this year. A couple is trapped in a house and slowly lose their minds and the film levels out halfway through. Then it ends.

'His House' is also a film where the subtext becomes too literal and it makes the meta narrative sound confusing, which led to a disconnect with everything that was happening.

I was invested in this couple almost immediately as Remi Weekes established pathos for these two early on. Then seeing them be so happy living in England even though they're in a dumpy apartment. It just shows how awful South Sudan was for them. It was some powerful stuff until the demons started appearing.

There are some revelations about what those demons are and the couple, Rial and Bol, do have conflicting ideologies about conforming to what white people want them to be or retaining their culture and who they are as refugees/immigrants.

That's all great, but this film is riddled with too many scenes of either of them walking down a dark hallway, it's dark, they hear a noise, they look, there's nothing. Cut. DEMON MONSTER AND LOUD NOISE. Cut. Demon is gone. It got so lockstep in the middle.

The performances help keep this film alive though. It's Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu in a dumpy apartment for ninety minutes and they managed to keep me somewhat invested in what was happening though it went off the deep end at some times.

'His House' is a fine film, but the lack of plot and the lockstep scenes of spooky demons just brought the film down from its high aspirations and commentary on assimilation.

Rating: Rent It

-Nolan