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Real horrors match supernatural scares
Impressive debut from weekes
His House Netflix ●●●● ● His House is a British horror with a difference as it focuses on refugees Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) and their transition to life on these shores as much as any type of ghoul or boogeyman.
Remi Weekes makes an imposing directorial debut with a London-set ghost story reminiscent of 2016’s Under the Shadow.
Like that Persian-language flick, the real-life terrors in His House are every bit as frightening as supernatural bumps in the night.
Most of the film is set in a grotty flat with more holes than a cheese grater and this lends a claustrophobic nature to developments.
Forget the vast Gothic mansions of traditional ghostly fare; Bol and Rial are trapped in their new home with nowhere else to go.
They are repeatedly threatened with being sent “back” to war-torn South Sudan which understandably fills them with enough dread to put up with their unwanted intruder.
Visions of past horrors the couple have been through are probably the scariest moments of the movie – and certainly what will stay with you the longest.
With these flashbacks and living nightmares, and a superb sequence that treats the council estate paths around Bol and Rial’s flat like the maze in The Shining, Weekes clearly has a flair for visual terror.
There are a lot of dimly lit scenes too as what is lurking around the corner and through holes is frequently left to your imagination.
Dirisu and Mosaku are magnificent; both have very expressive eyes – captured by Weekes in many close-up shots – and you can believe they are a couple who have been to hell and back.
Former Doctor Who Matt Smith (Mark) does a good job with a small role and the props and make- up departments come up trumps with the protagonists’ intimidating looks.
While I wouldn’t want to spend the night in Bol and Rial’s flat, I was very happy devoting 90 minutes of my time to this riveting, slow-burn supernatural triumph.