Even the walls have ears ... no, really

His House

Cast: Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Bradley Banton, Mevis Birungi Director: Remi Weekes Duration: 1 h 33 m Available: Netflix

Finally, a haunted- house movie that deals with the ol’ why- don’t- they- just- leave question from the get- go. When married couple Rial and Bol Majur arrive in England from war- torn South Sudan, they are given a dilapidated council flat and several film rules, the first of which is: “You must not move from this address.”

There are other commandments, listed by Matt Smith in a wicked supporting role as a government worker. “No pets,” he tells them. “No guests. No friends. No parties. No ball games. No games.” A pause. “No balls.”

The new home is terrifying — rotting walls inhabited by strange squealing creatures, lights that flicker and die, strange thumps in the night, the tiny yard strewn with garbage and lost in the sprawling maze of a housing estate. And those are just the mundane, Earthly issues. Within days of their arrival, the Majurs find themselves beset by visions of demons and death.

What’s especially clever about the screenplay, co-written by first-time feature director Remi Weekes, is the way it fuses story and backstory to create a stew of scary possibilities. Rial and Bol witnessed much suffering, both in their own country and on the way to their new one — their young daughter died during the journey — and so the possibility exists that these visions might be the result of that trauma. The workers at the refugee centre assume they are just superstitious Africans.

Racism, both overt and covert, plays a role in the story, as well. Sometimes it’s subtle, like the mall security guy who decides to follow Bol around the store where he’s looking at polo shirts beneath a giant poster of a happy (white) family wearing them. Or the (Black) kids Rial approaches for directions, who hear her accent and tell her to go back to Africa. These scenes go nowhere but speak volumes.

Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku are superb in their roles, each dealing with the scary situation in a unique way. In a shrewd twist, Bol is the more emotional of the two, responding to stress by being often on the verge of laughing, crying or both.

And where most horror movies try to crank up the momentum in the last act, pushing forward with ever more and severely hellish visions, His House takes time out to explore more of the situation that caused these people to leave their homeland, as well as some of the difficult but also questionable choices made along the way.

As such, it goes a good way toward explaining just why this couple’s house is being haunted, another aspect of story most horror films pay lip service to at best.

All of which makes His House a very different kind of fright from start to finish. ΠΠΠΠ