Hidey-Ho, Horror Nuts! Welcome back to another edition of WTFHM!
So, I know I said that this week, I might review A Quiet Place 2. Well, I didn’t get around to it. What? I never said I would definitely review it. I said I MIGHT review it, okay? 
This is my blog, I’ll do what I want. :P
So, anyway, while A Quiet Place 2 isn’t a thing this week, I did, however, check out a movie that popped up on my Netflix about a month ago that looked pretty good and, at the time, I’d been putting off watching it because I haven’t really been in the mood for haunted house movies lately.
Welp. Guess that’s over. This week’s movie:
His House starring Sope Dirisu, Wummi Mosaku, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba, Javier Botet, Yvonne Campbell, Vivienne Soan, Lola May, and the Eleventh Doctor - Matt Smith.
So, okay, this story opens with a refugee couple fleeing war-torn Sudan with their daughter. Their daughter dies along the way, but the couple, Bol(Dirisu) and Rial(Mosaku) make it to England and are put up in a government-assisted home that is apparently the envy of all the white government workers…
...cuz they keep saying the house is bigger than their houses, you see. Not because of the poolside view or anything.
Anyway, Bol and Rial are happy to get started with their new lives. Since they’re refugees they have to adhere to strict guidelines, which they’re all too happy to stick to because they and Bol, in particular, are committed not to return to Sudan.
Very quickly ghostly stuff starts happening around the house. The two of them start seeing and hearing things. Rial gets the script pretty quick and tells Bol, in story form, her thoughts as to why they’re seeing ghosts in their new house.
See, there’s a legend of this dude that steals from a witch or an “apeth”. As penance for his theft, the apeth haunts his home and, generally, everywhere he goes.
Yes, she thinks that an apeth has invaded their home. Bol, who’s totally into assimilating into the culture they now live in, tells Rial that’s there’s no such thing as ghosts, blah, blah.
And like a scene later, the apeth goes, “Hold my beer”.
Bol starts seeing his dead daughter Nyagak, only she has a monster mask on and she’s hiding in the walls.
Oh, and there’s also, like, a literal ARMY of other ghosts trying to kill Bol. After a particularly hairy encounter with them that ends with him hammering holes in the walls, he shows up to his caseworker and tells him, “Um...we got rats. Move us.”
Mark (Smith) the caseworker tells him that that’s going to take a lot of paperwork and why do they want to move anyway (your house is bigger than my house, etc.), but Bol insists...crazily. Mark relents and tells him that they would be out to have a look.
So, Bol comes home and Mark and another caseworker come through and see all the giant holes in the walls and they’re like...you got some big rats, bruh.
Bol starts in with the vermin lie when Rial comes in and goes, “No, not a pest problem, an APETH problem” which leaves the caseworker looking at them like,
They’re pissed and Mark gives them his “you-were-supposed-to-be-one-of-the-GOOD-ones” face. Bol begs them to give him a chance to fix the walls and everything will be fine and Caseworker Mark’s like Ooookay.
So. Rial lets Bol know that at this point she could give a sweet and spicy barbecue fuck about living there and that she’s going to leave. Bol does what any haunted horror movie protag does to his wife and locks her in the house.
And, like, all the while, the apeth is telling both of them that he’ll give Nyagak back if Bol takes his own life. He even shows up and tells Bol that he needs to repay what he stole or else.
What did he steal? We-hell, lemme tell you.
Rial manages to escape the house, but she wakes up back in Sudan, surrounded by her family. We’re then taken into a flashback where Rial and Bol are trying to escape their village in which lots of people get massacred.
They try to get away by bus, but the bus only has enough room for people with children. In a straight-up Titanic villain move, Bol grabs a kid and secures passage on the bus and thus, his and Rial’s escape.
Yeah. He stole a whole kid. A kid with a mother who gets left behind and gunned down. A kid who died at sea while they were trying to escape. No wonder they’ve got an Apeth haunting them.
So, Bol finds Rial in the really real world and brings her home. The both of them are pretty resolved in what needs to be done, so Bol takes it upon himself and cuts himself to summon the Apeth to take his life...which works spectacularly.
The Apeth works to get into his skin...literally, but wait, here comes Rial for the win!
Rial comes in swinging and jumps the Apeth, slitting its throat. Bye, bye scary monster witch!
And so, Caseworker Mark comes back ready to pull them out of the country for all the fuckery, but hey the wall has been fixed and everything seems to be okay.
My favorite thing? Mark’s all, “Wow, what happened?” And Rial’s all, “We killed the witch” and we laugh and laugh, end credits.
So, what did I think of this one? Real talk, this was a great movie. Look, I know a lot of your horror nuts are plugged into the American horror scene and that’s cool and everything, but for all of you sleeping on foreign horror, maaan, it’s time to:
This one is legit high-level second-tier horror. Yes, there’s social commentary, but, really, isn’t the best horror the stuff that mirrors real life?
High praise for His House. A definite jewel.
Okay, so next week...
We're going to look at the 6th most popular movie on Netflix...at least as of the time I'm writing this. The Seventh Day. Yes, another possession movie...but Guy Pierce and Stephen Lang are in it, so, I'm there I guess.
See you next time!
O~
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