Review: ‘His House’ and the immigrant experience as horror.

His House

“Be one of the good ones.”

It sounds like a nice thing, but what it means is “don’t make trouble. Don’t make work for me.” This is the Britain that Bol and Rial arrive in, and the line they hear from Mark, the man in charge of their asylum status. Having arrived from Sudan, a country ripped apart by tribal civil war, the run-down council house they are given to stay in looks like a mansion. Nevermind the bugs, the rats, the barely functioning electrics, or the smell (“just open the window and let it air out” Mark says).

There’s little that might phase them though, having crossed two contents and a stormy ocean that claimed the life of their daughter. The cold attitude of the social workers charged with helping them is the least intimidating thing they have faced, but it’s also one of the more horrifying things in the film. It’s hard to believe that casting the immigrant experience as a horror film isn’t a well-worn trope at this point because it’s so terrifying, even when you consider the ghosts that have followed them from home.

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Review: The Day Of The Doctor – The 50th Anniversary Special

Doctor

The *Third Conditional* in English is the impossible *”what if?”*. All the other conditional forms deal either with present truths or future ideas, plans and dreams of what may come. They are the ones that are still soft and malleable, ready to change on a dime as the present hurtles into the future. But the *Third*,  it stands alone and stony in the past, a constant reminder of all the stupid decisions you’ve made, every ripple of the butterfly effect shaping the puzzlebox hotch-potch that you are today. The *Third* is impossible in that, no matter the reason or motivation, you can never change what has gone before; all you can do is dream of what you would have done instead. *If + Past Perfect + would have + Past Participle* is the very structure of regret.

But base emotions like regret are just for mere humans. Impossible is nothing for a Time Lord. What might he possibly have to regret?

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