Movie Nation

“His House” is a high-minded horror film, a ghost story/witch movie with a message.

If it’s not as edge-of-your-seat frightening and involving as “Get Out,” its elevated intentions still put it in the same conversation.

It’s as current as a headline and as hot as a political hot button allows. And as the film plays out against the backdrop of the trauma of emigrating from a war-torn homeland, the cost in lives, morality and sanity, it manages to “both sides” this controversial issue.

We see what immigrants go through to get “here.” And we see the cost children pay on that journey.

Rial and Bol went through hell to get here, “here” being the UK. Local bureaucrats may not be granting them their most fervent dream, but “bail as asylum seekers” will do, “a home of our choosing” while their case is being considered is as close to the finish line as they could hope.

Because we’ve seen the race that got them here. In a quick, impressionistic montage, first-time feature director Remi Weekes shows Bol (Sope Dirisu) toting daughter Nyagak (Malaika Wakoli-Abigada) across the Sudanese desert, the over-crowded boat that sinks as they cross the Mediterranean, the screams and the horror on face of Rial (Winmi Mosaku) was they lose the child in the chop.

Now, the functionary (Matt Smith of “Doctor Who”) who shows them around a dilapidated, buggy and smelly apartment enthuses that “a new beginning starts with a single step,” and takes Bol’s firm declaration of “We’re NOT going back” as “that’s the spirit.”

All they need to do is be on their best behavior, check in once a week and “fit in.”

Bol resolves to do just that. Rial is resisting. English pleasantries fall on her deaf ears, conversations with strangers take on the darkest passages of the memoir of their journey.

“We’re not like them,” she tells her husband. They don’t belong here. They should go home.

And that flat? It’s not just the upkeep and amenities that give them the creeps. There are noises in the walls, voices, flashes of the little girl who drowned on their way here. Both hear the voices, both hallucinate.

Bol starts haunting the local home improvement store, buying hammers, pry bars and box cutters. The wallpaper comes down, then the drywall. What is IN there?

One clever bit, him grabbing at the wiring, yanking until it leads to seaweed which turns out to be tangled in Nyagak’s doll, which a hand reaches from inside the wall to yank back.

Rial seems resigned to all this, a hard, knowing woman with an answer. There’s an “apeth,” a witch. And it’s followed them all the way from Sudan, egged on by the terror of their night crossing of the sea that went so wrong.

The hallucinations crop up at odd times and tend to reflect the growing cracks in their marriage. She wants to eat on the floor, with their fingers, as in the old country, to speak in Dinka, their native tongue.

“ENGLISH!” he barks. “Next time, let’s try the TABLE.” But all she gets out of using a knife and fork is the “taste” of the “metal.”

It’s not close to being the scariest movie you’ve seen this year. But the political/immigration subtext, the grim cause-and-effect of their haunting and a pretty good twist or two make “His House” a haunted British council flat tale well worth checking out.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, horrific images, death

Cast: Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba and Matt Smith.

Credits: Written and directed by Remi Weekes, story by Felicity Evans and Tony Venables. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

This one jumps the gun on the season by debuting Friday. And yes, this is a “red band” trailer.

Sophia Loren, grand dame of the Italian and international cinema, has a fine star vehicle built around her in “The Life Ahead,” a sentimental drama tailor-made for her by her son, director and co-writer Edoardo Ponti.

The earthiness that was always a part of her appeal, the flashes of fire, spark this battle of co-dependent battle of wills between a very old woman close to losing her grasp on reality and the angry, wayward orphan who could slip into a life of crime if her influence on him doesn’t “take.:

In “Life” (premiering 11-13 on Netflix), the 80something Loren plays an age-appropriate Holocaust survivor who has taken in foundlings her whole life, talked into one last orphan to raise — for a price, of course.

Momo (dazzling newcomer Ibrahima Gueye) narrates our story, and he meets Madame Rosa (Loren) in the market. He snatches her purse.

All “Mohamed” wants is the chance to impress the low-rent Neopolitan mobster (Massimiliano Rossi) who might throw a little work his way. Momo can’t be more than eleven or so, but as a Senegalese orphan in a strange land, he figures the streets are his future. So he’d better polish his hustle.

Dr. Coen (Renato Carpentieri) has taken on the role of guardian, via the state. But the kid is up to no good. The good doctor, recognizing the antiques that the kid stole, gambles on an intervention. If only his old friend Rosa, already keeping a Romanian Jewish immigrant boy and baby-sitting a transgender sex worker’s (Abil Zamora) toddler, would take Momo in.

AFTER he apologizes and returns the stolen candlesticks, of course.

“SCUuuuuuza,” Momo purrs, insincerely. “Apology NOT accepted,” she barks (in Italian with English subtitles).

But if the doctor pays her enough, she’ll change her mind about “the brat.” Momo has to get along with the other kids, stay out of trouble and never call her to her face what he does to the other kids — “Cagna,” “the Bitch.”

The kid narrates this story intermittently, and he picks up on what an odd duck Rosa is. She zones out from time to time. She has a locked room she likes to sit in in the rough-hewn basement of their old apartment building. “Down there, I feel safe.”

And she has numbers tattooed on her arm, which the kid wonders about.

The script, based on an old Romain Gary novel, sets up a tug of war over Momo’s future, and his mortal soul. There are worse drug dealers to be stuck with than Ruspo (Rossi), who puts him on the street, selling. The idea of a “fatherly” street criminal seems almost Dickensian.

Dr. Coen’s not in the picture as much, so Rosa walks Momo down to an old friend’s shop. Hamil (Babak Karimi) is just the fellow to instruct a young Muslim on the difference between right and wrong, and how to grow up to be a proper Muslim man. And nobody turns Rosa down.

“Your eyes and voice sing the song of deceit,” he complains, before agreeing to take the kid, who “didn’t even know I was Muslim.”

Testy Rosa, who frets over the kid’s behavior when she isn’t getting lost, sitting dazed in the rain or flashing back to (we assume) the traumas of her childhood, is the other “role model” in the kid’s life. But she’s the one who needs him as much as he needs her.

Young Gueye sneers and sulks through much of his performance as Momo. He fights every good thing that might worm its way into his life. But the simple purchase of a bike, or losing himself in his jams on his headphones, makes him exultant.

There’s a fantasy element to the film, an African child dreaming of the lion on a rug that Hamil has made. Add that to the desperate cross-Mediterranean migration into Europe (glimpsed), the Muslim kid taken in by Jews, the transgender Lola and the boy’s introduction to the drug trade and “The Life Ahead” can seem as if it’s checking off boxes meant to clutter up a fairly simple story.

But Gueye is a magnetic presence at the heart of it, and Loren lends it all the grace notes it leads, confronting the boy, sadly relating the story of her personal experience of the Holocaust and giving the kid the perspective to make better choices.

“It’s when you give up hope that good things happen,” she promises. Not that he buys that.

Pairing Loren up with a child with this much spark, acting-up and acting-out, proves to be a winning formula for the film. And whatever Momo has to look forward to in his “Life Ahead,” young Mr. Gueye will someday be able to tell his children that he got to work with a genuine screen legend in his very first feature film. And that he held his own.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for thematic content, drug material involving minors, some sexual material and language

Cast: Sophia Loren, Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora, Renato Carpentieri, Babak Karimi, Massimiliano Rossi

Credits: Directed by Edoardo Ponti, script by Ugo Chiti, Edoardo Ponti and Fabio Natale, based on the Romain Gary novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Coming next year. No doubt after a full length trailer has been whipped up in addition to this taunting teaser.

“Roobha” is a Canadian drama that gives a transgender romance and its fallout a South Asian touch, set as it is among Toronto’s Tamil community. It poetically folds Hindu myth into a story of self-discovery, “coming out” and finding oneself and love, a journey that is a rocky road indeed in Levin M. Sivan’s film.

Anthony has gambled everything on owning a neighborhood bar, the Music Box. But it’s failing, as is his health. He’s ignoring doctor’s orders about smoking and drinking, two hazards of his profession. But he’s meeting his obligations to his wife and two children, even as he lies to them about how things are.

Roobha is the name of an attractive sex worker who comes in to the otherwise quiet bar with her “sisters” after hours. There’s chemistry and a tentative flirtation between bartender and umbrella drink fan.

Does Roobha think Anthony knows? Does Anthony know to look for the Adam’s Apple give-away? For that matter, does he know how Roobha keeps a cheap motel roof over her head?

Sivam’s film, based on a story pitched by “Anthony” (Jesuthasan Antonythasan of “A Private War”), turns in on itself, avoiding a non-linear narrative. We follow Anthony’s domestic situation — his wife (Thenuka Kantharajah) is making plans, making noise about selling the house and the bar and move back to where they were happier and debt-free — suburban Stouffville. We see his doctor visit, his brooding through clouds of cigarette smoke.

And we pick up on his attraction to Roobha.

But to her family, in an earlier spot in the timeline, Roobha is Gokul (Amrit Sandhu), who has returned from running away to Mumbai with the dream of teaching dance.

“What kind of a man teaches dance?” Gokul’s mother wants to know. Caught trying on a sister’s clothes, Gokul’s father wants to know “What kind of man does this?”

Both are plainly rhetorical questions. It’s hard for any parent, even an immigrant from a culture where transgender people are shunned, to be that naive, or that deep in denial.

When Gokul’s mother begs her child to not have surgery because “I want my son,” she can’t express much surprise when Gokul reminds her “You never HAD a son.”

The story’s poetic touches come from Anthony’s youthful dalliance in poetry (in Tamil, untranslated), something his wife reminds him of in front of his children. Falling for Roobha awakens the poet in him.

And then there’s the story Roobha frames the film with in voice over, the Hindu myth of Bahuchara Mata, who catches her husband dressing as a woman, cavorting in the woods, and whacks off his genitals in response.

This sort of “coming out” story has been around long enough to have its soap operatic screen tropes — the bullying, the gay bashing beating by “customers,” the “Big Reveal” to the lover who hasn’t seen “The Crying Game.”

That said, it’s still a most engrossing variation on well-worn LGBT themes, with two sympathetic performances at its heart to carry it off.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, explicit sex, alcohol, smoking, profanity

Cast: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Amrit Sandhu, Thenuka Kantharajah, Sornalingam Vairamuthu

Credits: Written and directed by Lenin M. Sivam, based on a story by Jesuthasan Antonythasan. An IndieCan release.

Running time: 1:32

Jeffrey Wright, Sam Elliott, Brad Pitt and now this guy. A damned all star team of voice overs.

Taking a bullwhip to Trump and his Vanilla ISIS/Y’all Qaeda backers.

The disgraced priest paints a white cross underneath his welcome mat to let us know he’s done this before.

And the former Padre Menéndez breaks out the cattle prod, the hammer, a couple of monkey wrenches and the brass knuckles, it’s to let the Devil know he means business.

The Mexican exorcism thriller “The Day of the Lord (Menéndez: El Dia del Señor)” reminds me of that Thomas Hobbes quotation from the poem “Leviathan.” Like mankind’s fate in life, this grim and gory thriller is “nasty, brutish and short.”

And as the Mexican version of the film has “Parte 1” in the title, the “short” part doesn’t fit. More’s the pity, because more is coming.

Juli Fábregas plays the two-fisted priest, a man we meet, broken and alone, hiding from the shame that headlines tell us that he went to prison for murder, something we don’t understand until those monkey wrenches come out.

There was a woman. We see her in his nightmares, tempting him like Satan herself. There was a little boy.

In those night terrors, even the crucifixes scream at Menéndez.

Héctor Illanes plays an old friend who begs for help. “My daughter has the horned Devil inside her,” he pleads, offering the defrocked padre a drink (in Spanish with English subtitles). Maybe it’s the booze talking, but there’s nothing for it but for Menéndez to agree to doing what he’s done many times before.

Ximena Romo commits, and I mean throws herself into the part of Raquel, who insists she’s just another rebellious teen girl, “a very foul-mouthed teenager” the former priest agrees. But her Dad saw the decapitated cat. This is no ordinary quinceañera survivor.

She curses him, calls him a “dirty old man,” does her special teen dance for him in an effort to throw him off his game.

“She’s a carcass who houses the Devil,” Menéndez hisses to her father. Time to get the brass knuckles out.

Let the savage beatings begin. No, this isn’t the stern and saintly exorcist of Max Von Sydow, or even the charlatan tested by The Real Thing in “The Cleansing Hour.” This is the torture porn version of an exorcism movie.

It’s a horrifically rough ride, and rather pointlessly so. I’m surprised the Catholic Church hasn’t protested this, as the last thing they need is an another abusive priest tale, this one “excused” because he’s fighting Satan.

At several points, the tables turn and the torturer who uses “Inquisition” chains to restrain the Beast, is tied up. He gets free.

“I guess they didn’t teach you KNOTS in HELL!”

Engaging performances aside, even with a moment of tooth-grinding levity here and there, “The Day of the Lord” isn’t doing the demonic possession genre any favors by turning its actors into bloody pulps via abuse, torture and pummelings. I’ll stick to the pea soup, thanks.

MPA Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Juli Fábregas, Ximena Romo, Héctor Illanes

Credits: Written and directed by Santiago Alvarado Ilarri. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30

There are those for whom “Borat 2” was too subtle, that it didn’t have enough bodily function or inappropriate sexual “chemistry” jokes.

Have I got a movie for you.

“Call Me Brother” is a raunchy, screwball stoner farce about teen siblings fighting that urge to be more like “kissing cousins,” and not willing to stop as “kissing.”

Houston native Christina Parrish wrote and co-stars in this quasi-queasy comedy about incest. Because that’s the gag that hangs over every goofy moment Lisa (Parrish) is back in the company, bedroom and bathtub of brother Tony (“Saturday Night Live” writer and actor Andrew Dismukes).

Their Texas parents split a decade before, with Lisa sent to live with her selfish harridan of a mother (Kim Lowery) and Tony growing up with his unfiltered Dad (Asaf Ronen). Now Mom’s off on vacation, and Lisa’s sent to stay with Dad and Dad’s new gal, Doris (Danu Uribe).

Lisa won’t mind sleeping in Tony’s room will she? I mean, he’s the “roomie you can never have sex with,” so no worries, right?

“Call Me Brother” chases these two childish teens — she’s 17, he’s a year older — as they bike, tickle-fight, play on the monkey bars and even romp in the tub, just like their childhood.

Flashbacks show us their tight connection back then, parents bickering in the background, tuning them out with play, cooking and sibling bonding.

But now, Tony’s in the habit of doing something that makes his future step-mom joke about “I clean your sheets.” He hangs with other sex-obsessed dorks over at Brian’s (Nick Saverino), who all want to know about “that hottie glazed in a sweet layer of polyester and insecurity.”

That would be Lisa, young enough to get upset at her brother killing chickens on his old school (block graphics) video game, who seems naive enough to not get the knack of the pot-smoking banter at parties or master the “just kidding” punchline Dad has with his dinner table tampon and menstruation jokes.

Bike rides and parties, it’s a carefree summer for the long-separated siblings, prancing about in slo-mo — so that Tony’s obsession with Lisa’s panties can be captured on camera.

It’s scripted as something of a tease, although things come to something of a head (Sorry!) at a big party that is like a gross, no-budget parody of every such scene in every teenage sex comedy to come before it.

Some of the shock-value banter is close to funny, and the sibling relationship bits are cutesie/goofy, and somewhat disarming even if the leads do look like real siblings.

Maybe it’s the fact that the “kids” all look closer to 30 that defuses that.

There’s not much to this other than the “let’s make a teen rom-com about incest” hook. But if they figured that would at least get “Call Me Brother” noticed, they seem to have miscalculated. No major distributor would touch it, so heaven knows what content they edited out in their “festival” cut of the film.

This kinky “SNL” incest sketch-run-amok used to be 30 minutes longer. Ick.

MPA Rating: unrated, crude sexual content, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Christina Parrish, Andrew Dismukes, Asaf Ronen, Danu Uribe, Kim Lowery, Nick Saverino

Credits: Diorected by David Howe, script by Christina Parrish. A Leomark release.

Running time: 1:17

Nine friends gather in the woods for a campout on the weekend of “the big game” at their high school alma mater. Only one is meant to walk out.

That’s the weary premise of “Triggered,” a grisly, gory variation on a timeworn horror tale theme, a movie characterized not so much by its characters — stock “types” — but by the one-liner-littered dialogue.

The nine — Suraya Rose Santos, Steven John Ward, Paige Bonnin, Russell Crous, Kayla Privett, Michael Lawrence Potter, Cameron Scott, Liesl Ahlers and Reine Swart — are connected. They were high school friends, several have coupled up and swapped about romantically.

They all bitch about “camping,” are prone to reopen old high school woulds, and all miss “Caleb,” the member of their crew who died.

Then they wake up with laser tag/bomb vests on, complete with timers. Mr. Peterson (Sean Cameron Mitchell) has a beef with these “reckless, entitled de-sensitized” 20somethings.

This must be a nightmare, right? One “where my high school science teacher stitched my a– into a metal vest, downloaded all the ‘Saw’ movies, bitched about ‘millennials’ for a hot second, then blew his f—–g brains out!”

That’s right.Peterson just said something about “only one will survive,” didn’t really explain “the rules,” and killed himself.

This “worst reunion ever” is a fairly unpleasant blend of giggles and geysers of blood. The “friends” reveal their secrets and their personality flaws as they stab, bludgeon, shoot and hack their way through the middle of the woods in the middle of the night.

Can Rian (Reine Swart), “the smart one” figure a way out? Don’t count on her beau, PJ (Cameron Scott). Dude’s a drummer with Butthole Equinox.

Maybe the tougher guys, flip sides of the same coin, will master the game. But Ezra (Steven John Ward) spends all his time trying to convince girlfriend CiCi (Kayla Privett) he’s not cheating on her. Raging Kato (Russell Crous) seems the safer bet. He starts with name-calling as if he’s working his way up to ax murderer.

“You’re basic…You’re a LEFT SWIPE on ‘Tinder!'”

Harsh.

It’s the sort of script where characters stumble upon each other, covered in blood and bleeding out, and ask, “Are you OK?”

Somebody’s bomb vest goes off and we hear “F—–g HARDCORE!”

Somebody’s “gay, every now and then.” Somebody has herpes. Somebody has an even bigger secret.

The chases, insults and bloody fights in the gloomy South African forest grow tedious, sooner rather than later. The funny lines are scattered through a movie meant to be deadly serious, maybe even generating a little pathos, here and there.

It’s not the worst movie in that Poe-Christie “kill off characters, one by one” formula. The players do well by their moments of terror or sadistic cruelty. But it’s entirely too obvious to come off, entirely too cluttered to have a character or characters rope us in, and entirely too chatty-jokey to ever be scary.

And it’s not funny enough to work as a sick comedy.

MPA Rating: unrated, gruesome, bloody violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Liesl Ahlers, Reine Swart, Sean Cameron Michael, Suraya Rose Santos, Steven John Ward, Paige Bonnin, Craig Urbani, Russell Crous, Kayla Privett, Michael Lawrence Potter and Cameron Scott

Credits: Directed by Alastair Orr, script by David D. Jones. A Samuel Goldwyn release.

Running time: 1:33

One of the many things broken by the COVID pandemic was the covenant between horror movie makers and their audience.

Horror movies just aren’t the same on a small screen once you’ve cleared your tweens. They demand to be seen in a theater with an audience of the like-minded, ready to revel in our communal fright — or derision if the frights aren’t there.

It’s a simple matter of screen size. A big screen sucks you in, overwhelms you. No matter how big your TV, that just doesn’t achieve the same effect at home. Seeing a thriller in a theater, even a nearly empty one, is more overwhelming.

Size matters.

I’ve spent the year reviewing horror movies without those crowd-sourced scares, and it’s left me at a loss as to whether say, “The Dark and the Wicked” really worked.

Conversely, the theatrical release “Come Play” is a Slender Man horror movie with a few genuinely hair-raising moments and some good effects. Writer-director Jacob Chase times out the jolts well.

But the adults involved can’t decide if they’re stunned by their (presumably) first encounter with the supernatural, or if they’ve seen so many horror movies that they just accept this digital (electrical) threat to their child at face value.

The most promising idea, a rigid adherence to experiencing something through the eyes and ears of a speechless autistic boy, is fudged here and there — the “scare him out of it” cinematic cure. And the ending is a cop-out.

Still, that’s a great hook. Lonely little Oliver (Azhy Robertson) communicates via a type-to-speech phone app, and is teased at school over it. He’s sensitive to noise, and damned if his condition isn’t driving his parents (Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr.) apart.

That’s the perfect time for the eBook “Misunderstood Monsters” to viral its way onto his phone. He switches off “Sponge Bob” long enough to swipe a few pages. He starts hearing noises, thumps and footsteps. Lights pop and flicker out. A clever boy, he turns the phone camera-and-light on, and that’s where he sees “Larry.” The book says Larry just wants a friend.

We know better.

Robertson, the kid from “Marriage Story,” whimpers and quakes at what he’s seeing. Mom isn’t much comfort. Dad’s keeping a roof over their heads with multiple jobs, including one as a night watchman/clerk at a pay parking lot. He’s distracted.

Eventually, after the kids who bully Oliver have a sleepover that turns horrific, even his parents catch on. This cadaverous, skinny thing is coming for Oliver.

Writer-director Chase, expanding his short film “Larry,” cleverly gives us Larry’s-eye-view shots of the monster looking through (sometimes busted) cell phone and iPad screens.

I was impressed, for a while, with how closely he adheres to the limitations of autism, and the ways it doesn’t signify low intelligence. Some of Oliver’s clever reasoning his way out of tight spots or how to “explain” what’s going on is beyond-his-years (about 8), but for the most part, there’s not much here a non-expert would quibble with.

The film’s theme is hammered and hammered hard — digital devices make even the non-autistic lonely and cut-off from the world (And autistic kids are really into screens, we’ve heard.), so Larry has fertile hunting grounds for “friends.”

Chase wimps out on his whole “bullying” subtext (Winslow Fegley is effectively childish and cruel) and losing the conceit of the kid having to fight this threat on his own is a major blunder.

As impressive as Jacobs’ (“I Used to Go Here,” TV’s “Love”) “fear face” can be, she’s maddeningly inconsistent in her reactions to the menace she and her little boy face together.

One of the stresses on the marriage is their child’s disconnect from each parent, not even making eye contact with his own mother. Even taking that into account, there’s little “mothering” or “fathering” about the relationships.

Gallagher (TV’s “Westworld”) at least manages a proper freak out or two.

The best effect is the wind blowing pieces of paper across the parking lot as husband-dad Marty fiddles with the light in his glassed-in booth, totally unaware that the paper is wrapping itself around the hidden monster in the dimly-lit space behind him.

So yes, there’s good stuff here, mostly in the earlier acts. But even mixed-bag horror flicks like this can work if they’re seen on the big screen. When this virus is finally beaten back, filmmakers and fans have a covenant to renew., fffi

MPA Rating: PG-13 for terror, frightening images and some language

Cast: Azhy Robertson, Gillian Jacobs, John Gallagher Jr. and Winslow Fegley

Credits: Written and directed by Jacob Chase. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:37