10 Horror Reveals Nobody Was Ready For
5. Built On A Lie - His House
Given how His House is the most recent release to be included on this list - the film only becoming widely available at the end of October - it goes without saying that you may want to tread carefully for fear of spoilers here.
Seriously, if you'd rather skip this entry and move on to Busta Rhymes and kung fu (yes, really), then now's your final chance to do just that.
Still here? Okay, then.
The feature debut of director Remi Weekes, His House is one of the most impactful horrors to have come around in many a year. Of course, so much of that hard-hitting impact is down to the reveal that the film pulls out of its back pocket during its second half.
With Sudanese refugees Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) having seen their daughter Nyagak (Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba) drown during their painstaking journey to reach UK shores, it soon becomes apparent that their new English home is haunted by an apeth, aka a night witch. Complete with ominous warnings about stealing a life and being a thief, Bol refuses to listen to this apeth, whereas Rial is more understanding and remorseful towards the presence.
Where the big reveal is concerned, the left-field slap around the face is that Nyagak was not the couple's daughter. Instead, she was somebody who Bol and Rial claimed as their offspring in order to be allowed on a bus to safety following a brutal massacre - with Nyagak's real mother left to die as part of said massacre.
As such, the life that the pair had made for themselves in England was one achieved by treachery.