Haunted, Mauled, & Bitten

This week, I'm thinking about the horrors refugees find in their new homes, a new natural horror movie, and a book about vampires and revenge (light spoilers below) . . .

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ His House, dir. Remi Weekes, 2020.

1. Frames. In His House, Weekes loves frames-within-frame—windows, doorways, and, especially, holes in the wall. When Bol (Sope Dirisu) reacts to the haunting in his home by opening up the walls, we find ourselves peering into them and, also, peering out of them. They're a visual conduit of suspense because they block our view, drawing attention to what's not visible—what we might be missing, what might be poised to reveal itself. Frames are limits, and on-screen frames underscore that there’s more, unseen, beyond.
2. Laughter. Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku are both captivating in His House. I find myself particularly thinking about the moments of unexpected laughter from Dirisu. This is a movie about the trauma of the refugee experience and these little bursts of laughter feel bizarre, even inappropriate. Sometimes precision in performance can be in the modulations of feeling playing across an actor's face or audible in their voice. But it can also be in an openness to the emotional swings and convening currents that meet us in trying times. Dirisu’s laughter is strange but real.
3. Haunted. Haunted houses are usually haunted by the people who lived or died there—haunted by their histories. In His House, the supernatural force is something Bol and Rial brought along with them. They’re haunted by their past rather than the property’s. The property, though, is inhospitable in various, tangible ways. It’s dingy, there’s garbage on the front lawn, and the lights don’t work right. And then there are the things that are difficult to distinguish as either tangible or supernatural—the peeling wallpaper, the sounds in the walls, the lights suddenly failing. The simultaneity and overlap of material obstacles and supernatural ones capture something real about the refugee experience—Bol and Rial have to endure the crushing weight of the past in the cold, bleak environs of the present.

Right Behind You.

A thought on horror's present.

◆ Primate, dir. Johannes Roberts, 2025.

4. One of us. Primate is a natural horror/“animal attack” movie which never resolves the question of its lead animal’s status within the human world—his status as person or other. Is Ben, the chimpanzee, one of family? He spends lots of time inside the house, carries a teddy bear, speaks to the family via a touchpad, and has a human name. Even so, he came to the family as part of a scientific research project, and he sleeps in an enclosed structure outside—an enclosure lockable with a padlock. When rabies makes him crazy, it’s his human-like qualities that make him especially sinister. Consider the moment, for instance, when he holds out a key fob menacingly so his victim, sheltering in a car, knows that he can get inside. Does this make him more of a person or more of a monster? We don't know what we want from animals. A safe (sometimes cuddly) otherness? A recognizable intelligence? A relationship with animal life that is at once familial and alienated makes their place in our world always contingent, always uncertain.

Living Deliciously.

A recommendation.

◆ Coffin Moon, by Keith Rosson, 2025.

5. Something old, something new. Of Coffin Moon’s many pleasures, a quality that stands out is its energetic balance of the recognizable and the new. Rosson’s road trip of revenge and vampires draws from classics—Salem’s Lot and Let The Right One In both make their presence known—but he’s allowed new imaginative formations to blossom within and around the cultural touchstones. The melancholy vampire Adeline—old but looking like a child, yearning for connection in the “children’s museum” warren prowled by her starving cast-offs—is a creature auditioning for her own classic status, a character for other artists to draw from in the years ahead.

Dead of Night publishes every Tuesday.

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