Premise: South Sudanese refugees in London are haunted in their new house by something that followed them from Africa.
Overall, I like a lot about this movie. I haven't seen a refugee horror story before, which is odd, because it's a pretty perfect idea in hindsight. I mean, the story of being a refugee is basically a horror movie even before you throw anything supernatural into it. Tying it into survivor's guilt is even better. It's a nice confined movie. I love some claustrophobic horror. Put a couple people in a room and watch them slowly go insane. What could be better?
The twist of the movie is solid, although I don't think the movie really played fair. It's not a twist we could really figure out. The characters are pretty internalized, and their main conflict seems to be about whether to adapt to British culture or not. The idea that they stole the girl in order to be saved comes out of nowhere. That really is the main problem I did have with the movie: it obscures too much along the way in order to conceal that extra twist of the knife at the end. I prefer when the focus is more on the build than the reveal.
Pretty much everything else works splendidly though. I really liked Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku in the lead roles. The small horrors of the refugee experience, like getting lost in a bad neighborhood, add nice tension throughout. The monsters in the wall help too. I like that for much of the movie, it's hard to say how much of this is in their heads. As a Sundance movie, it does the thing that it's supposed to do: make me curious about what the filmmaker (Remi Weekes) will do next.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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