His House is a strong debut, and exciting - even as its horrors risk redundancy as the film wears on - for its uncanny merging of political experience and the usual, perilous haunted-house thrills. Something as knowing as it is threatening. Something lurks, creep-crawling through the interiors, shuffling, gazing out at them. An outright spookshow rouses them out of bed, talks to them from behind the walls, plays tricks in the shadows. So when the trouble starts, it hits almost as soon as Bol and Rial move in. They’re alive in the things this couple carries: a baby doll and a beaded necklace reminding them of things lost on the way here. And here, those scars are as much physical as they are spectral. They bear with them the scars of where they came from. In real life, there’s PTSD, survivor’s guilt, the pain of assimilation into a European culture whose own history of colonialism bears, with enough distance to encourage collective amnesia, on the violence from which the couple has taken refuge. And one of His House‘s cleverest plays is to take the conceits of the genre - the home haunted by restless spirits the demon predator that latches itself onto its victims and follows them wherever they go - and analogizes them to the things a refugee couple might experience in their new homeland.
#Out of the past movie#
This is a movie that wonders, aloud with great terror, whether that’s as true as has been foretold.īecause, to put it plainly, this couple is haunted. Better than where you came from, surely, is the logic.
This is our first lesson: How a country manages to say, without anyone needing to say it, that because you’re fleeing the worst, you’ll take what you can get.
It’s not easy to blend in when you seem to be the only immigrant couple on the block, so foreign in these environs that even the local black residents poke fun at your accent (with more viciousness, it’s worth noting, than most of the white residents). “No pets, no guests, no friends, no parties…” It’s a litany of Don’t s, Can’t s, Not Allowed s. They can’t break any rules, or work or fend for themselves, or make their own living arrangements. Bol and Rial can live here, but they can’t live - not really. Because all of it comes with strings attached. Because when the “horror” kicks off, it’s in the context of all of this: the home they’ve been given, the allowance, and, most pressingly, relief from the violence of Sudan. His House - Remi Weekes’ directorial debut, now streaming on Netflix - starts as one type of film and very quickly reveals itself to be something else. They are guests in this country, another thing of which they are often reminded: They are here on bail. Large digs given the circumstances, they’re told, even if what greets them upon arrival are roaches and exposed wires. They’re granted an allowance of 74£ and a place to live in one of London’s lower-class neighborhoods. And, somewhat to their surprise, Bol and Rial been approved for asylum status. Their boat capsized at sea there’s little to suggest that the survivors were numerous. In most ways, they have it better than most, and they’re reminded of this more than once. But things really kick off with what happens once the couple finally arrives - exhausted, hopeful, doubtful - in the tight-lipped and unwelcoming England, and are immediately confronted with the rigors of their new lives as political refugees. We get glimpses of that violence at home, as well as the voyage toward ostensible security in Europe. Bol (Sope Dìrísù) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) are a young pair of asylum seekers fleeing the all-consuming violence of South Sudan by way of a dangerous and all-too-familiarly tragic voyage across the Mediterranean.
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