Why “His House” Redefines the Haunted House Genre
This week I’m recommending Netflix’s horror/thriller, directed by Remi Weekes, His House, which premiered at Sundance in 2020. This film cleverly marries its two central themes—the refugee-immigrant experience and the haunted house—in a way that I found both exciting and unsettling, and immensely creative. While the idea of starting a new life obviously lends itself to the theme of new beginnings, what’s more significant, and perhaps more interesting, for me, is Weekes’s direction, which breathes new life into the haunted house genre film.
In recent years, thanks to films like, Get Out (2017), Us (2019), and Midsommar (2019), just to name a few, horror has found a fresh, new frontier for social commentary and genre-bending. It feels like we’re entering a new era, which is considerably more thoughtful, artful, and impactful than horror eras of the past, and with more and more films like this popping up, I’m finding myself more and more here for it. That said, His House falls into this category, providing creepy imagery and jump scares from the start, while masterfully painting a picture for viewers of the obstacles our protagonist couple faces as refugees in a new country.
Bol and Rial are a married couple who’ve escaped from war-torn, South Sudan, by means of sailing across the ocean, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. On the journey, they lose their daughter to the sea, which is one of the central traumatic elements of the film that eventually comes back to haunt them once they’re beginning to settle into their new life. They seek asylum in England, where after a waiting period, they’re put on probation, connected with social services, and set up in a run-down home in a bleak and impoverished English suburb. We quickly see just how scary life for the couple is both inside and outside their home.
Bol is watched closely by a security guard when he goes into a shop to buy some new clothes, and Rial is harassed by a group of black teens, who tell her to “go back to Africa” when she asks for directions one afternoon, proving that racism is alive and well. Quite soon after they settle into their house—furnished with little more than a bed, small kitchen table, and a sofa—strange nightly sounds and sightings become routine. Rial is convinced they’re being haunted by an apeth, or night witch, which latched itself to them during their perilous journey overseas, and now dwells in their home.
After long, Rial is ready to do as the teens so rudely suggested and flee back home, but Bol is not so easily swayed. He goes out and buys a hammer, which he then uses to smash holes in the walls in an attempt to chase the demons out during an intense night of unrest in the house. The way that light and dark are used to play with reality here is masterful in my opinion—darkness reveals the demons and light causes them to disappear—however, throughout the film, I never got the sense that I was meant to believe the hauntings were all in the protagonists’ heads.
At one point Bol goes to the social services office to request a housing transfer, mentioning to their caseworker that rats are the reason they want to leave, only to be called out as entitled by the other caseworkers in the office. When he comes to the house later to check on their situation, finding the walls destroyed by Bol’s hammering incident, Rial appears and assures him that a witch is living in the house, which they are currently battling. Bol doesn’t correct her, and the caseworker leaves prepared to write them up and kick them out.
We see throughout the film just how differently Bol and Rial react to the hauntings, which we learn later has everything to do with something that happened during their journey out of South Sudan. This unnerving revelation forces us to question everything we thought we knew about the couple, but it makes what the demons are saying to Rial—that she can’t trust Bol, but can save their daughter—than they are to Bol—that he is doomed to the apeth—much more clear.
The end of this film is quite satisfying while remaining completely unsettling. Rial and Bol are different people now than when they arrived. Having faced their literal and figurative demons, they’re ready for their new life to begin. The final image especially is one that’s stayed with me. I’m in awe of how well this marriage of refugee-immigrant experience and haunted house story worked for me, and I was left with a feeling similar to the one I had after seeing Get Out for the first time. Something between hopeful and terrified. In my opinion, the way this film portrays trauma works so well because it uses the horror film genre as its vessel. Trauma by definition is horrific, and like the demons in the house, it tends to dwell within the walls of our psyche, until we either face it or it defeats us.
His House is currently available on Netflix.
