Watch the hair-rais­ing first trail­er for refugee hor­ror His House

One in the hand­ful of long-over­due reck­on­ings that the UK film indus­try has faced over the past cou­ple years con­cerns the pres­ence of BAME char­ac­ters onscreen and pro­fes­sion­als behind the scenes. A diverse Britain should be reflect­ed by a diverse cin­e­ma, and a new title com­ing online next month will con­tribute to that hope­ful sea change.

The first trail­er for Netflix’s upcom­ing hor­ror His House arrived today, adding a top­i­cal bent to the usu­al haunt­ed house nar­ra­tive. In this instance, a cou­ple flee­ing vio­lence in South Sudan come to Eng­land in search of safe­ty and a fresh start, only to dis­cov­er that their gov­ern­ment-pro­vid­ed hous­ing con­tains unholy spir­its that wreak malev­o­lent hav­oc on the new inhabitants.

Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù (a fea­tured inter­view in the newest issue of LWLies) and Wun­mi Mosaku lead as the refugees stand­ing tall against the super­nat­ur­al ter­rors and the man­made trau­mas they sym­bol­ize, while the for­mer Doc­tor Who actor Matt Smith por­trays their unset­tling case work­er. The trail­er sug­gests that the film will strike a bal­ance between the neo­re­al­ist details of immi­grat­ing with the miles of atten­dant red tape, and the occult night­mare of roach­es, phan­toms in the walls, and crum­bling voids in the floor.

Writer/​director Remi Weekes land­ed a dis­tri­b­u­tion deal with Net­flix even before his debut fea­ture had gar­nered a warm recep­tion at this year’s Sun­dance. Signed to a big tal­ent-agency con­tract soon after, we can expect news of a fol­low-up timed for max­i­mum expo­sure around this one’s Hal­loween-adja­cent drop at the end of October.

Weekes is part of a new gen­er­a­tion of Black tal­ent shak­ing up the sta­tus quo in UK film, just as his film turns the well-trod clichés of hor­ror on their head. Togeth­er, they’ll make the busi­ness a rich­er and more var­ied world, with paths paved and ready for oth­er hori­zon-broad­en­ers to follow.

His House comes to Net­flix on 30 October.