Strangers on the British soil : Horrors and hopes of asylum seekers in the film His House

Abstract: This thesis is a close reading of the horror film His House (2020) and has its theoretical base in the works of Sara Ahmed. It focuses on the emotional experience of the film’s lead characters who are South Sudanese asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. The study is set out to chart which emotions the characters feel, which of them are the most overpowering and what does the presence of these emotions imply about the asylum experience. Close reading shows that feelings typically understood as negative are dominant – guilt being particularly present as it is tied to the film’s monster. The thesis argues that the film calls for attention to asylum seekers’ mental health through showing the horrors experienced by the heavily traumatized lead couple. The study also argues that horror fiction is a window to public anxieties, and as such offers a valuable research avenue to ethnic and migration studies as well as social sciences at large.