Extremely impressive (spoilers)

Every haunted house movie always has the same flaw, which is why don't they just leave? ‘His House’ creatively answers that question with a compelling and tragic story that provides depth to all the horror throughout the film, ultimately making it far more effective than most other movies in the genre.

The scary moments, while stylish and well-executed, aren’t particularly unnerving. For seasoned horror fans, none of the groaning and slithering and paranormal dick moves will seem groundbreaking, exactly; if you’ve seen one shadowy spectre scamper up a wall, you’ve seen them all.

But writer-director Remi Weekes stages familiar bump-in-the-night material with unexpected flair. The effects, many of them practical, are unfashionably herky-jerky, which lends them a frighteningly otherworldly quality. Furthermore, Weekes shows an apparently innate understanding of how to escalate and sustain tension, and his feature debut is marked by moments of gutsy innovation.

The subtext isn’t subtle: Weekes casts his shape-shifting “night witch” as a manifestation of undigested grief and survivors guilt brought from war-torn South Sudan to Britain by a refugee couple (Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu).

The real strength of ‘His House’ lies in its empathy - you share the fear of it’s lead characters. Their terror. Their desperation. Their sense of dislocation. When is the last time that a horror movie made you legitimately feel and understand its characters’ anxiety even if you hadn’t experienced those anxieties yourself?

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