This Halloween, Black horror enthusiasts have another thriller to add to their watch list.
His House, by screenwriter and director Remi Weekes, follows a displaced South Sudanese couple as they seek asylum in a small English town. In this haunted house tale, Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (Sope Dirisu) soon realize that while escaping the horrors of one home, a new horror haunts them in the next.
“I wanted to tell a very personal story of a very psychological piece about two people trying to, I guess, survive after surviving,” Weekes tells theGrio.
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The story feels personal indeed as this year has been one of surviving after surviving various real-life horrors for Black communities and beyond. Actor Dirisu affirms “I feel as though I’m better equipped within my community, our community, to endure the hardships that we’re going through at the moment.
“If you had told me what 2020 was going to look like for our community, I don’t know if I would have wanted to be around to see it. But us coming through the other side of this year is going to be one of our greatest triumphs. As we go through our hardships, we’re growing stronger together.”
The hardships of 2020 have also brought about a push for more representation in film and television. One genre that seems to have already been making waves toward that diversity is horror. As His House begins streaming on Netflix this week, many horror fans are still reeling from season 1 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, which presented a fantastical retelling of America’s racial terrors within a sci-fi thriller context.
Mosaku, who also starred in Lovecraft, tells theGrio “it feels like we’ve been waiting for this. I feel like we have been waiting for this moment where we are seen in this genre, celebrated in the genre and we really get to explore the Black experience, whether it be, you know, through an African-American Black experience with Lovecraft, or Sudanese refugee experience in the U.K.
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She adds, “I just think it’s so important to kind of see what people are feeling and going through. And the horror is that the horror you feel, the fear that you feel is just a little a percentage of the real horrors that real people are going through.
“So I just feel it’s so important for empathy, understanding and opening one’s heart. And I’m so glad that our stories are being told now.”
Trailer:
His House will be available to stream on Netflix beginning Friday, Oct. 30.
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