HIS HOUSE (2020) ORIGINAL HAUNTED HOUSE SPIN. MOVIE REVIEW.

Haunted house nice twist.

Giving a new and refreshing twist to an already widely used theme such as the haunted house is what Remy Weekes has achieved with his first movie His House, which premiered in 2020 on Netflix. Instead of setting the story in an old, gothic house, Weekes takes us to a ramshackle and seemingly ordinary house in the middle of a gray filthy, and lifeless ghetto. The characters, a couple of African refugees.

Escaping a massacre.

Bol and Rial have managed to escape the massacres of ethnic cleansing in South Sudan. After a dangerous trip, they finally arrived in England and are detained, but have been considered for political asylum. The refugee couple has to follow a strict list of requirements, and one of them, and the most important, is that they cannot leave the house assigned to them by the government. If they break any rule, they will be detained again and deported, meaning almost certain death. The problem is that quickly strange or paranormal events begin to happen inside the house. Not having the option to escape, the couple has to deal with the supernatural inhabiting their new home, each in their particular way.

His House opera prima.

This is the first feature film of Remy Weeks where he does an economical and precise directing job, without great camera movements, but effective with his shots. Weeks also writes the script, in which unconventional horror film situations are played, such as the ones we mentioned previously. The most interesting aspect that he touches on is the mental condition of the survivor’s guilt, where a person considers having done something wrong by surviving a tragic event when many people in the same situation did not achieve it.

New faces, great leads.

The two main actors give us great performances. Sope Dirisu plays Bol, who is the one who experiences the survivor’s guilt to a greater extent, and little by little we will know how this is related to the apparitions. He is the one who deals with more positivity in the whole situation and hardly tries to fit in this new society. But it is Wunmi Mosaku, as his wife Rial, who stands out the most. Rial barely survived a horrendous tragedy, and this has marked her in such a way that she has a very different approach than Bol regarding the ghoulish events inside their house.-Honest question. If you have been about to die, and have experienced firsthand the greatest horrors that a human can endure, how would you react to paranormal events?

Losing identity.

The film in general is lacking in bright colors. Grays and a dead shade of fern green give it a hopeless look. The choice of this lack of vividness in colors alludes to how the refugees have to lose their identity to adapt to a new and very different culture to survive. Showing us an ordinary lower-class neighborhood, with its garbage and badly cut grass is an achievement of the decorating team. Also, they manage to give a boringly ordinary house a menacing tone through how dilapidated and decrepit it looks.

Supernatural and SFX

The special effects are mostly practical. Makeup and camera effects help to accomplish these effects. All are effective in showing us the paranormal situations and entitie’s’ appearances in the house. Nevertheless, His House cannot avoid falling into some cliches of the genre. Also, the couple encounters these supernatural phenomena every day, and although this situation is necessary for the narrative of the story, the repetitiveness reduces the impact of the events.

Front facing the fear.

His House is a different movie from what is commonly seen in the horror genre. The appearances are according to the African mythology lore beliefs of the supernatural and this in itself is refreshing. Although it does not have memorable moments, it is very consistent in its treatment of the characters and the story is coherent. Without many jump scares, it focuses more on the psychology of the characters when facing supernatural events. Relies more to how the characters are gradually falling into despair and with great success show how each of them copes with the otherworldly events differently.

DELIRIUM SCORE