User reviews

His House starts great and it also ends strongly. However, that beginning and that ending feel like they are from two different movies. It's quite unfortunate that it made me feel that way because I do think that there is a lot of things that this movie gets right.

Let's start with the first half of the movie. What I would consider the horror half. This film began very quickly and left very little time for the viewer to get situated. The first 45 minutes were indeed very scary, and I was drawn to the screen. But what made that first half so great, was that it didn't just rely on the usual horror tropes. His House explored themes of racism and all the other challenges that refugees face. These issues were explored in a way that caused tension even outside of the house that works as the centrepiece of the story. Another aspect that created its own horror was distrust and challenges of marriage. This film managed to create an atmosphere of constant terror and tension, and I, for one, really liked it.

The second half, however, moves into a completely different direction. What started as a pure horror film, shifts more and more into a drama as the run time moves towards its end. The horror changes from the typical haunted house style more into creature horror. That's also where the movie stopped being scary for me. I have never found creature horror to be particularly scary and this film didn't change that. I do realize that that is a personal problem, and most people will probably find the second half to be nearly as scary as the first one. But it's not just the normal horror stuff that changes. The two aforementioned aspects of immigration and marriage are almost completely forgotten about. And it is quite unfortunate that this is the case. I felt that they added so much to this movie and made it more than just another haunted house film.

With that being said, I did like the second half nearly as much as I liked the first one. His House end up becoming a rather touching drama by the time it finishes. And if it forgot about the challenges of immigration and marriage, it replaced it with the conundrum of whether to leave ones home country in the first place. Although a new home promises a better life, is that always going to be the reality?

There is a lot to like about His House. I think that it fantastically approached horror by making it about more than just jump scares and a scary atmosphere. I also liked that it was a haunted house film that didn't take place in an abandoned mansion. And, I also liked the second half with everything it had to offer. The thing that lessened my excitement was the fact that I felt like I ended up watching two different films. Had there been more cohesion between the two halves, I'm certain that I would've liked this film quite a bit more.

The horrors that asylum-seekers have to put themselves through when meshed with a haunted house storyline is what we get in Netflix's His House. Bol (Dirisu) and Rial (Mosaku) are refugees fleeing their war-torn country of Sudan; they brave bullets, rough waters, and even lose their daughter as they finally arrive in Britain where they're granted probational asylum. They're temporarily moved into a shabby, crumbling house in the London suburbs, and that's when the past begins to haunt them.

His House is a pretty strong directorial debut from Remi Weekes, who has also written the screenplay. It may just be a 93-minute film, however, His House manages to dive equal parts deep into the struggles of immigrants as well as survivor guilt. While Bol tries to blend in with the new surroundings (he sings football anthems at bars, changes his attire, and prefers to use tables while eating), Rial holds firmly onto their culture (she wears their daughter's necklace, dresses in vibrant colors, and sits on the floor while eating).

The scares, the greatest thing about horror films, are well-conceived. Weeks mixes jumpscares with more atmosphere-heavy ones in an effort to keep viewers on edge. Practical and visual effects are put to solid use in these sequences, though some fare better than others. A little inspiration has been drawn from films like The Conjuring and Lights Out, in a good way. Weekes, through some effective crafting that blur the lines between fantasy and reality, elevates His House beyond the conventional haunted house movie.

Not everything works though. The final act switches horror for a somewhat predictable twist, and while the closing frames make for a powerful set of metaphors, it feels slightly sketchy from a closure standpoint. The performances are good for a film that revolves mostly around two (or three, if you include the beast) characters - Dirisu and Mosaku showcasing credible, lived-in feats.

Hail to director Remi Weekes for a very different approach to horror!

I fell in love with the main characters from the very beginning, and sympathized with them. The performances by Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku are incredible, especially Wunmi, who - in my opinion - delivered an Oscar winning performance. She was stunning!

I found 'His House' so captivating that I was glued to the screen. The director effectively created suspense with background imagery and shadows - without the use of blaring scare music. This made it more realistic, and a hell of a lot scarier. Some scenes were truly creepy! The use of close-up photography and wide and long shots were also highly effective. 'His House' might come across as another haunted house film, but this was very different, with bucket loads of emotion - enhanced by Wunmi's fabulous performance!

Eventually, the film offered more than I expected. It was a heart wrenching depiction of a couple who lost a child - but not entirely in the sense you'd expect. It was disturbing on so many levels.

'His House' might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is brilliant film making. The film received 37 award nominations, winning 8 - including Outstanding Debut by a British Writer Director or Producer, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Production Design, Best Effects, Best Film.

Would I watch it again? Probably, yes.

Well... I was lucky enough to watch this movie at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival (internet). I am a big fan of horror films and this movie definitely delivers. The story is one that blends very well the horrors that many refugees face along with the manifestations of the terrors they bring. Often times the most scariest stories are those that deal with the non supernatural.

More specifically, the movie is actually logical and doesn't fall for the classic tropes. In many scary movies that deal with a haunted house, I ask myself "Why don't they just move?!?!?!" but in this case they can't because they're placed in these specific, confining circumstances in order to get their asylum granted. I was also a fan of how the film portrays the female character as the strong, cool and collected wife while it's the husband who quickly descends into madness.

Overall, I encourage everyone to watch this movie when it comes out on Netflix Turkiye.

Exploring themes of grief, trauma, immigration, assimilation, remorse & acceptance through a horror lens, His House is a haunting & harrowing depiction of the refugee experience and, in addition to capturing their inward & outward struggle in adjusting to new life in new place, also delivers as a thrilling & effective haunted house chiller.

Written & directed by Remi Weekes, the film blends character drama & genre thrills into one finely layered narrative and holds nothing back when unleashing the terror that dwells within the walls of their new home. While there are times when the story becomes perplexing, everything adds up & makes sense once the full picture of the characters' backstory is revealed.

The atmosphere within the rundown residence is palpably tense & often unsettling, and though Weekes relies on jump scares to frighten the viewers, most of them do work out in the film's favour. Wunmi Mosaku & Sope Dirisu play the young refugee couple seeking asylum after escaping their war-torn homeland, and they both chip in with performances that are credible, grounded & convincing.

Overall, His House is a welcome entry in the world of horror and also marks a solid debut for Remi Weekes' directorial career. The proper care with which he sketches the characters' troubled past, vulnerable present & uncertain future, and brings it in sync with the immigrant issues gives his picture a relevant touch & relatable appeal. One of the better horror entries in Netflix canon, His House is certainly worth a shot.

It starts out really creepy and the first half was great horror, but I got the feeling they didn't go far enough. The location was awesome. Really gloom and dark. But I just feel like they they had the opportunity to make this much more scary then it ended up being. Seems like this is often the case these days. But it was quite entertaining. A seven out of ten for me.

Going in I thought I'd know what this film was about, I mean a film in 2020 about two black refugees going through the immigration system in Britain how can it be anything but what I'm expecting it to be? But I was wrong, and I am so glad I was.

Another reviewer said that this is "woke" and a commentary on immigration, it isn't, not at all. This is not a film about race or the differences in race or the difficulties of adjusting to living in a new country, it's not trying to say anything about the immigration system it's just telling a story that happens to involve new immigrants to a country, saying this is a commentary on immigration is like saying Jaws is a commentary on water safety or Die Hard 2 is a commentary on airport security.

This film is a supernatural horror about the desperate things that people will do to survive and the consequences of those actions, and it's one of the most entertaining horrors I've seen for a while with some genuinely unsettling scenes, I can only hope people don't dismiss it because of a few ignorant reviewers who see imaginary agendas whenever there are black characters leading a film.

8/10

A good physiological horror film with a main theme and a surprising twist to the story.

I like the idea, the concept is sound (no spoilers, sorry) but it's execution is flat. It feels like a half baked BBC drama more than a Horror on Netflix.

The cast is fine, downtrodden but likeable in a 'not entirely likeable sort of way' I think it probably wants to be more of a social commentary than an actual horror...

And it's this which I think is part of the problem, it wants to show the horrors that people are fleeing from and the perils and loss of the journey but that (if done properly) would be enough, better even than what we wind up with here.

People will review it well and say it's the best movie of the year etc, but it isn't, if it is then they need to watch more movies... It could have been so much better, it's a shame they wasted the opportunity.

There are so many terrible films, particularly in the horror genre, on Netflix at the moment. This is not one of them. All the horrors I've watched recently are either far too dumb, or too far the other way - relying on being artsy or having powerful imagery but sacrificing a satisfying story. This one gets it just right. It is genuinely intriguing but leaves you with a resolution. There are layers of interpretation, but also a nice clear cut story.

I found for a good part of the film I thought it was just a theme of asylum seeking; a couple fleeing something bad and arriving at a not-beautiful side of Britain, with the man trying to adjust to a new culture and then woman conversely holding onto her roots, all through the narrative of an apparently haunted house. The pair being explicitly warned that they might be sent "back" if they made any trouble, or didn't integrate properly, emphasised this theme. But it turned out to be about something quite different - something I can't really say without giving away the plot substantially. It could have been based on anyone with a past, and the fact that the main characters were refugees worked well for the narrative but was not the entire theme.

It was well cast and very well acted, which is not actually all that typical in many films being streamed at the moment. Matt Smith is in it but as a side character: they don't try to force him into it beyond his welcome just to exploit the well known name; also refreshing. He is good in his part, but the two leads are allowed to shine.

I'm not much of an artistic critic but I felt they built and maintained the atmosphere brilliantly. I can't even tell you if it was visuals or score or lighting or whatever because I'm not the type of audience to dissect that - I just know it gripped me and took me with it emotionally. The tension is good and there were jump scares that work well. Personally I can't stand a film that's just reliant on jumpy moments or gore and lacks any actual substance. This, to me, gives the best of all worlds. And when it ended I felt genuinely glad I'd watched it, and watched it to the end.

Honestly this little film buried far below the (poorer quality) netflix recommendations was a very positive surprise for me and I would definitely recommend watching.

I was surprised by this movie.

It has multiple layers and the story is told as a thriller/horror movie.

In the 17 comments it has right now, a lot has been said about the story.

I will not go into that. I want to say the acting is great, the music suits the story nicely and it does has some scares and creepy moments.

I enjoyed it, not your everyday watch I guess, but very well executed, with a tense atmosphere almost throughout.

Quiet dull and boring, more drama than horror - nothing special or interesting, and for sure not a good horror movie: the horror parts are what I call all cliche in. If you are a connoisseur of the art of horror you can easily skip this one.

It starts of feeling a lot like a regular horror movie about a haunted house, but soon turns out to be more like a drama about two refugees trying to fit in and to cope with their guilt. Which they do in very different ways (i wont say more about that as it is a huge spoiler). But that being said it is a well crafted movie and i found myself gripped by the story and the characters. I felt the ending was a little bit of a letdown, but i guess i had different expectations because of the title. Still it is a solid 7 in my book.

As my parting shot to the Halloween season, I give you a horror film that mostly eschews the usual tropes to concentrate on two good human beings terrified by their country's turmoil and their own familial loss. Scary it is a bit; searing it is much in its commentary on current societal guilts.

You've not seen a haunted house tale like this one. The ghoul is less ghoulish than emblematic and the residents haunted by their past more than their Stephen King-like ghostly resident. Brimming with commentary on refugees and loss, Remi Weekes' His House is a thinking person's thrilling scare and cultural relevance.

Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) flee from war-torn South Sudan, losing their daughter in the sea, and are given a home in London by the Brit social system. They aren't allowed to leave their new home, and thus they must endure the torments of a creature that may have followed them to torture them, Babadook-style, about their alien status and responsibility for their daughter's drowning.

While the ghost makes sounds and actually talks at times, writer/director Weekes centers the story on the protagonists themselves-Bol's guilt and Riel's motherhood. The jump scares are few but the menace all the more harrowing because of the mental torture. Weekes masterfully displays the couple's loneliness through shots of a hollow home and bleak, vacant outdoors. He also quietly shows through flashbacks the grim remembrance of a ravaged country and a lost daughter.

As refugees, Rial and Bol are appropriate examples of good people caught in compromising situations they seem to have no control over. In that way, Weekes has given the audience a realistic heads-up about the challenges of immigration and the plight of unfortunate parents upended by war and fate.

This thriller at a hairy time of year does double duty competently scaring and responsibly commenting. His House becomes our house of the mind and the world, now and forever. On Netflix

A Sudanese couple escape to England and are placed in a house which also seems occupied by a particularly unpleasant spirit which may have followed them on their journey and following the tragic death of their daughter.

Genuinely quite scary in places, this is a compelling and quite smart horror feature. It may be a tad brazen with its imagery, but it's a solid story which finally and shockingly explains what is going on. A great debut.

I'll jump straight into it. I thought this film was pretty good on the whole, but at same time it could have been so much better.

First off, I enjoyed the message the film portrays and it definitely resonated with me hours after watching. The acting was good from all involved and it built suspense really well also.

What I didn't enjoy was that I thought it was a bit dull at times. Long dream sequences you knew full well were dreams and, because of this I felt slightly disengaged from the film. Sticking with the theme of the dream sequences, some of them I just didn't understand at all. Seemed like it was made to be confusing for the sake of it.

It's not a bad film whatsoever, but it's something you won't shout about to your mates or whoever. I think a 6/10 suits this well.

A long time ago, in a city far, far away I worked in a London hostel for young people who found themselves homeless. Over time one of my responsibilities became the oversight of the house next door to the hostel in which were accommodated a smaller number of people who had arrived in the UK seeking asylum. All these years later I can still remember some things about some of the people I worked with there Yugoslavia with whom I often watched and talked about football or the news updates from his homeland. At one point we even accommodated a man who was an IRA informer - not an asylum seeker exactly, but we were to treat him as such when he was placed with us.

When I spent time listening to and learning about these people what quickly became clear was something I knew at a subconscious level but had never really processed or given active thought to up to this point - that when you move countries, no matter how few tangible, physical possessions you bring with you, there are some less tangible things that you can't leave behind. It may be your own physical body, your culture, your beliefs and expectations, your memories and hopes, or many other things. All these come with you, whether you like it or not. This was reinforced for me when my wife and I emigrated by choice to South Africa; in doing so you realise how much more invisible baggage there must be when one flees as a refugee.

This is the territory His House covers so well - a small-scale British horror movie about a couple escaping Southern Sudan for the UK, placed for the time being in a nameless house on a nameless housing estate. They come with little in their hands, but much else they haven't been able to shed, and it's those things that haunt them so compellingly over the 90 minutes or so of this film.

The film stands on two brilliant central performances from the actors playing the couple at the film's heart - at least one of whom is on screen for the whole of the running time. But it's also much more than the performances - it's the clever use of a wide range of ideas and tropes such as the haunted house story, the home invasion movie, gothic fiction, or even at one startling point the Narnia Chronicles. These tropes are both embraced and subverted often to subtly powerful effect; and it's the wordless moments that are often the most powerful - sound design or slow camera pans bring us some of film's most memorable and effective moments.

On the face of it the film's ending may seem cloying and naive, but the reality is that it gives us a more profound truth than we may been prepared for; that in order to truly make a home for ourselves in a new context we must look squarely in the face of all the unseen things we carry with us, accept them, grieve them as appropriate and place them in their proper setting. Then we move on; not without those things, but with those things giving light and shade to all that we are in the new places in which we find ourselves. As such this is not only a powerful, chilling, and moving film about the refugee experience, but one about experiences we all go through at different life stages.

I thought the first half of the film was great. They move into this extremely run down apartment and instantly start hearing and seeing things. It got really creepy there for a minute. The second half of the film really starts to drag, I found myself bored and disengaged. It just got a little too strange for me. I would normally give a film like this 5 stars, but because of the first half I'll give em 6.

This was the perfect horror movie. Genuinely terrifying in parts. And also giving a view into a world of human experience that encompasses human-born horror, loss, grief, desperation, striving and hope. I really cared for these characters and what happened to them, their story. I felt they were so real and believable in their struggle with one another, their love for one another, their tragic loss of community and connection, their being thrust into a cold, thin alienating, lonely new life in a strange land. Great actors , great script and engaging story, great camera work and yes, a twist. For me, there is a lot to like here and I will be looking out for more by this film-maker.

Low burn start, then we go deeper through the African violence drama and refugees. Their folklore with witches and ghosts is brand new to the "move on a new house" cliche. Bol and Rial bring the evils spirits with them like a sinister luggage. The visual FX are pretty decent (the nightmares at sea are magnificent) but in the end story runs out of gas leaving us with some appetite.

One thing that I was instantly annoyed by, or rather surprised, is the fact the two characters speak perfect English. Even when the female character asks for directions while mispronouncing words, she speaks perfect English the entire film.

The stero typical racial differences are also very distracting from the political message they want to send (more on that later). It seems that they desperately wanted our sympathy, but didn't want to put in the work to build up their character.

The political message they try to convey is simply unclear and very poorly visualized. They move from one time and place to another and it's unclear how it alles fits together.

The sound effects are heavily overused; there is often more sound than image and it often used in overkill to keep the viewer interested. That being said, the overuse of jump scares is also a very desperate attempt to get the viewer in their grip. This should not be the kind of movie that should have to rely on these easy ways to scare the viewer.

The visual effects were OK, but also overused and you could definitely witness the early days of a young visual effects creator, using everything he has in his tool belt to how off his recent skills. The director should have known the time and place for this better.

My most important observation was the idea that this film borrowed a LOT of elements from other horror films, but copied them without any real original tone of voice. They just wanted a quick way to bootstrap their movie and sell a decent trailer, which is simply disappointing.

The ending, which I will not reveal, because there is not much to spoil, is just blurry, plain and not quite as thought provoking as the film leads up to. You turn off the tv with an awful font for the end credits and think to yourself "well, that's one and a half movie that I won't get back...".

The acting of most characters was OK. I hope this film may lead to more roles, but I think their talents were underused; they could have easily carried his film more, instead of relying on cheap computer effects.

In summary, this movie seems like a long short, one that was stretched to an hour and a half in order to be used by Netflix and add to their large stack of average-quality films.

I was expecting a generic horror and what I got was a very eerie horror/drama that had eye opened moments too. The suspense was evident throughout the film, the setting wasn't horrific or ghostly yet it felt uneasy. The acting was top notch. Definitely recommend this film