The best horror is always about something else, some real horror, not the ghosts or monsters or even killings. It is about something deeper in our real culture, and uses the terrors and fears of the horror genre to tell those truer terrors. Writer director Weekes' "haunted house" film isn't about ghosts in a literal sense. It's about the ghosts that haunt us, our mistakes, our regrets. It is also about the refugee experience and how horrific that experience can be.
Weekes doesn't spend a lot of time on the journey from Africa to the UK. He gives us a few glimpses but mostly focuses on Mosaka and Dirisu settling into their new home, a run down condo in suburban London, and lets their exhaustion, their resignation, and their nightmares tell the story. Both do an amazing job of inhabiting their characters and giving them a very lived in trauma, showing us the way trauma lives with us.
It's the haunted house motif, where all the demons of the past start arriving, which tells their story and brings what they have survived to "life." Their isolation, their losses, their nightmares are vivid. It is a brilliant analogy and a great way to get into the shoes of these characters. And it is rather scary, working as a horror movie as well as something more. And when the film reaches its gut wrenching conclusion, it hits you so powerfully.
I believe this is Weekes' first feature and I am very curious to see what he'll do next.
His House
Starring: Wunmi Mosaka, Sopi Dirisu, Matt Smith
Writer/Director: Remi Weekes
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