Film of the Month: His House, a Bone-Chilling Movie About the Horrors of Being a Refugee
PUBLISHED November 16th, 2020 05:00 am | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 02:32 pm
If you’re looking for a break from the recent mentally and emotionally exhausting political talk year, this movie might not be the one for you. Premiering at Sundance Festival earlier this year and released recently on Netflix, His House is an important movie to watch. This horror movie is a supernatural flick, sure, with jump scares abound and things scuttling in the dark, but its strength lies in director Remi Weekes’ interrogation of trauma and the terrifying ordeals of being a refugee (some spoilers ahead!).
Bol and Rial, a couple fleeing from South Sudan (played by Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku respectively), are granted probational asylum in Britain after their crossing kills their daughter and most of the people they travelled with. The British government assigned them a shabby house with peeling walls and dismal furnishings on the outskirts of London; but far scarier than the ghosts, shuddering knives, and demons that plague the house are the everyday interactions that these refugees have with the people around them.
They’re told from the start of their asylum to assimilate, adapt, and “be one of the good ones”. A case worker, played by Matt Smith (Prince Philip, first two seasons of The Crown), tells them that to keep their house, they must be model citizens. There’s racism and disdain from their tenement neighbours.
One of them is more open to assimilation than the other. Bol is insistent that they will not lose their own home, so he sings football songs in bars, buys clothes that white men wear in advertisements, and eats with cutlery. Rial struggles far more with this. She holds on to her old possessions, sits on the floor to eat and prefers to use her hands. Bol is willing to leave their old lives behind in order to start anew. He finds small joys in things like getting a haircut and walking in the streets of London. But Rial’s old life is sacred to her. She finds walking through her own suburb a terrifying, threatening experience.
But then there are the ghosts they brought with them. They are haunted by an apparition of the daughter who died on their trip – Rial speaks to her, while Bol has terrifying visions of her that seem almost seem like PTSD-induced hallucinations. The apparition turns the couple against each other, telling Rial she can get her daughter back in return for “repaying a debt”. What the debt is is not made clear to us until late in the movie, when the trauma they’ve been through is shown to us in chilling detail.
The ultimate message of this movie appears to be the necessity of confronting our ghosts before we can move on. There is no running from trauma and history – they always come back for us. Rial and Bol learn this, and face their ghost in the movie’s B-movie style climax, both choosing to protect the other. They choose their futures over their shame and guilt, and choose to take in the ghosts of the people they’ve lost that haunt them. By confronting their past, they reclaim their lives for themselves – “This is our home. We live here.”
His House is now available for streaming on Netflix.
