Hidden Horror Gem: Refugee Couple Tries to Find Home in a Haunted House in This Netflix Title

(SPOT.ph) There’s no more classic staple of the horror genre than the haunted house movie. Between cabins in the woods, the twisted hallways of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, and a literal Monster House, the ins and outs of haunted house movies are well-known amongst all horror fans, so it gets increasingly harder with each spooky season to shake up the formula and provide something new. After all, we just came out of an extremely extended lockdown; We’re all used to dealing with demons within a confined space by now.

This search for a uniquely crooked haunted house flick landed us right on the doorstep of His House, a 2020 horror flick that you have to wander deep into the streaming platform Netflix to find. (Seriously.) With a plot that seemingly covered the unseen horrors of a war-torn South Sudan, our attention was immediately caught, but after discovering the film’s 100% consensus rating on Rotten Tomatoes—a rare feat for modern horror movies—we just knew we had to check it out.

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Here’s why you should check out the underrated horror film His House: 

His House hits the ground running—or we guess you could say “swimming”—with Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Loki’s Wunmi Mosaku) fleeing their country by sea to what they hope is a better life in the United Kingdom. The British government eventually allows them a run-down house, where they can reside while they prove themselves worthy of becoming citizens. They’re given strict rules that they must follow or else they face deportation. The couple confidently agree to the rules, but little do they know a haunting presence in the house is going to make their stay oh-so incredibly difficult.

What makes His House interesting is how it takes the typical haunted house movie and historical refugee crisis plot and smashes them together. How it weaves between the two is something to behold; when the historical drama starts to feel trite and melodramatic, it switches gears to a freaky horror film and vice versa; when the scares start to even feel a bit generic and overdone, the film contextualizes and grounds its horrors in riveting real-world stakes. It’s a simple case of having two established genre stories come together to elevate the material into something more.

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The hauntings feel almost vignette-like, with wholly different sequences that each tap into the variety of heavy feelings the couple faces in the new country. We witness the tension-filled xenophobia they face for merely stepping outside their house, we see the anxiety that comes with maintaining their “new home” in a neighborhood steeped in poverty on every corner of the frame, and most especially, we feel the burden of trauma the couple carries with them for having to abandon their country and their people. The movie flows along pretty smoothly, because these sequences bring about each of the different feelings so vividly, without making them feel the same, even if they all stem from the couple simply struggling to move on.

Tension even arises, as it’s made clear that Bol believes the best way to move forward is to bury the past and embrace the new life, while Rial believes that the past still lingers because they haven’t reconciled with it. It’s the dramatic cherry on top of the horror that culminates in a truly resonant last 20 minutes, where the characters realize they must face what has been haunting them the whole film. Let’s just say there may even be a downright heartbreaking twist that you would not have expected to come from this kind of horror movie.

While His House is not, say, Get Out or Hotel Rwanda, it’s an odd blend of the two that somehow just works. Plus, you know, it also stars House of the Dragon’s Matt Smith.

His House is streaming on Netflix.

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