‘His House’ Ending Explained: Netflix’s New Horror Movie Comes With a Devastating Twist

Warning: This article contains major His House spoilers. Surely you knew that from the headline, right?

Netflix saved the best for last this October with His House, a new original horror film from writer/director Remi Weekes. Starring Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country) and Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù as Sudanese refugees who can’t shake off the ghosts of their past, His House is a brilliant combination of a classic haunted house story and a modern-day immigrant nightmare. You will scream, and you will gasp, you will cry, and not always for the reasons you might expect.

His House, which is the feature debut from Weekes, first premiered at Sundance Film Festival back in January, where it was met with near-universal praise from critics. Now it’s finally debuted on Netflix today, just in time for the Halloweekend. Like any good horror movie, the His House ending leaves room for interpretation. But for those who got a bit lost in the tall grass, let’s get into the His House ending, explained.

What is the His House plot?

Married couple Bol (Dìrísù) and Rial (Mosaku) are refugees from South Sudan who traveled to the U.K., fleeing war and violence. Somewhere along their journey across the desert and tumultuous sea, they lost their daughter,  Nyagak (Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba). We don’t know exactly how it happened—we are shown only quick flashbacks. They are granted asylum in a small town in England with conditions: They can’t look for a job, they can’t take any more money than the little allotted to them, and they have to stay in their assigned dilapidated apartment with the door falling off the hinges. The social worker (Matt Smith) tells them they are lucky; usually, the refugees share housing with multiple families. They will be checked upon weekly, to make sure they are adapting.

Bol and Rial try to settle into their new life, but before too long they are visited by a malevolent spirit—maybe their lost daughter?—who seems to live within their walls. Each has separate, terrifying encounters with the ghost, and each takes away the message that they want to hear. Bol, who wants to leave the past behind, thinks they need to burn what they brought from overseas. Rial, who wants to return home to Sudan, thinks the spirit wants them to leave the UK. But soon the spirit tells them what it wants: Bol’s life, in exchange for their daughter back.

An attempt by Bol to obtain different housing only earns extra scrutiny from the social worker, who thinks he’s being ungrateful. When the officials come by for an inspection, Rial purposefully sabotages their chances of staying in the country by telling them about “the witch.”

What is the His House plot twist?

Bol tries to lock Rial in the house, but Rial escapes. At first, we think she has somehow returned to Sudan. She is greeted warmly by friends, who embrace her. But soon Rial confesses she knows this is a dream. We then flashback to the day Bol and Rial escaped their country, as the people around them were being murdered in cold blood. In a captivating scene, Bol and Rial try to force their way onto a bus that is accepting only children. Bol, in desperation, looks around and sees a child—Nyagak—who he grabs.

“She is a child!” he shouts, and he and Rial are let onto the bus. As another woman screams for her daughter and bangs on the bus window, we realize in a horrifying moment of clarity that Bol and Rial never lost a daughter at sea. They lost someone else’s.

How does His House end? What is the His House ending, explained?

Back in the present, Bol, overcome with guilt, decides he will offer up his flesh to the spirit to save Nyagak, and he does. The spirit appears via a sinkhole in the kitchen, looking like a wrinkly humanoid gremlin, and begins to quite literally get under Bol’s skin. At first, Rial lets it happen. We see Nyagak appear, holding Rial’s hand. In a final dream sequence, Rial admits it is time to say goodbye to the daughter that was never hers to begin with. She makes the decision to save her husband, by slitting the throat of the demon with a butcher’s knife.

In the final scene of the film, Rial and Bol are visited by officials who once again inspect their home. The couple has covered the sinkhole in the kitchen with a rug and repaired the walls. When the social worker asks Bol if he still “sees her,” referring to his daughter, Bol responds, “Your ghosts follow you. They never leave. They live with you. It’s when I let them in, I could start to face myself.”

Bol and Rial promise they are happy here, in their new home, and the movie ends.

The question, of course, is whether the ghosts that haunted Bol and Rial actually existed, or whether it was all in their heads. Weekes doesn’t specify for sure one way or the other—it seems the sinkhole still exists in the final scene, but no one besides Bol and Rial saw the ghost—and instead leaves it purposefully ambiguous.

In a way, it doesn’t matter whether it was “real.” The demon was clearly a metaphor for the guilt that Bol and Rial were carrying for this horrible thing that they did. Though Bol tried to avoid the feeling, he had to face his ghosts in order to live with himself. Now, with the past behind them but not forgotten, they can finally face their new life, together.

Watch His House on Netflix