Director: Remi Weekes
Writers: Remi Weekes, Felicity Evans
Stars: Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba
Run Time: 1 Hour, 33 Minutes
Synopsis
An African man carries his child through the desert of Sudan and boards a truck. They get on a crowded boat, and it sinks; the daughter drowns. It’s a dream; the man survived, but now has nightmares. His daughter is conspicuously no longer with him. They are in a refugee camp. They are Bol and Rial Rigur, and they are being released from detention as refugees.
Their freedom is contingent on several rules. They must not fail to report every week. They are not allowed to work. They will be assigned a home from which they may not move. They leave on the bus in the middle of the night, terrified, but hopeful for their new life.
They meet Mark Essworth, a social worker who lets them in to their apartment, which hasn’t been cleaned. It’s filthy, got bugs, and in a bad neighborhood. On the other hand, it’s a lot bigger than needed for just two people. Bol laughs until he cries.
That night, Bol hears noises outside and has a PTSD flashback. He’s scared by a bird and doesn’t even see the ghost behind him. The next day, Bol gets to know the neighborhood a little better. That evening, he finds a hole in the wall that maybe has something living in it— until the hole suddenly disappears. Bol peels the wallpaper off the wall while searching for the hole, but it really is gone.
Rial gets lost in her own neighborhood, and has a bad experience. She creeps out the nurse at the clinic by talking about her dead children. She sits and just stares at the wall that Bol had his trouble with the previous night. There’a tiny hole in the wall that has voices inside. Bol comes home and talks about starting a family, but she’s had a really bad day.
Rial tells Bol a story about ghosts and voices from walls; she thinks their dead child has risen from the ocean and followed them here. He yells that there is no witch and their daughter is dead; she’s imagining the whole thing. She knows that he suspects something isn’t right.
That night, Bol is attacked by a ghost with a knife. The house is clearly haunted, and he admits it to Rial. They go outside and burn all the daughter’s things; they have nothing left of hers now. “You don’t wonder what it tells me?” She asks him. It tells her she can get their daughter back and that she should be afraid of Bol. He has some really crazy encounters with a whole gang of African ghosts; or is it his own PTSD causing this?
Bol goes to see Mark Essworth and tells him he wants to live somewhere else. He says there are rats and bugs. Bol smells bad, he’s wearing dirty clothes. Mark says he doesn’t look good, and there will be an investigation. Bol knows he can’t say there are ghosts; what can he do?
Mark comes to the house and sees the huge holes in the wall that Bol put there with his hammer. He has to report this. Rial comes in and tells them about the witch. They think Bol and Rial are both crazy, but they do let them off with a warning this time. Rial wants to go back home, so he locks all the doors like a prison.
“Your life is not yours; you stole it,” says the voice in the dark. “You are mine now,” it continues. It wants to trade Bol’s body for his daughter’s.
Rial climbs out the window and finds herself back in Africa, and everything is wonderful there. She knows it’s all just a dream. We see that it’s a full flashback to the horrors they experienced back in Sudan, and there’s no ghosts involved— it’s all real. It turns out they stole Nyagak from her real mother so they could get on the bus out of the Sudan. They didn’t have a child, they stole one. The creature says “I can bring her back; give me his body, and I will give you what you want.” It wants her to kill Bol.
Bol knows the guilt. He cuts his own wrist and says, “It is coming.” It breaks open the floor and crawls up after him. It tries to climb inside Bol, but Rial picks up the knife and cuts the monster’s throat.
Mark and the social workers come back, and Rial says she killed the witch, which makes everyone happy. Bol has started patching the holes in the walls, and they say they are happy now. When they leave, Bol and Rial see the ghosts of their entire village, along with Nyagak. It’s their house now.
Commentary
The story about the two immigrants was interesting, and we see some of the things that real refugees go through. It’s certainly not easy on them. The visuals are really good, especially Bol’s dream sequences and the various ghosts that he sees.
The refugee situation is hard, but nowhere near the stress and guilt of their own PTSD from the crossing and what they did. The backstory about where Nyagak came from only adds to the stress and tension. It’s dark, it’s creepy, it’s emotional, and it all seems quite realistic when considering survivors’ guilt and subsequent mental illnesses.
It’s really good. It’s a good drama, and it’s a good horror film.