THIS REVIEW OF UNWELCOME CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. Jon Wright’s Unwelcome is (forgive me) a welcome throwback to the hallowed tradition of vicious onscreen ankle-biters who cut up in more ways than one. Know going in that this slice of home invasion horror parts company with Critters, Gremlins, and Puppet Master by recruiting its beasties from Anglo-Scottish folklore. Like the locals in the film will tell you under knitted brows: don’t you dare confuse the Redcaps of Unwelcome with filmdom’s smartass Leprechauns. These wee fellas aren’t seeking retribution for a misplaced pot of gold; they’re out for a pound of flesh. Or two. Maybe three.
They’re hungry is the point, and the film gets to its creatures in due course. Wright and screenwriter Mark Stay are more interested in securing firm dramatic footing before they toss us at the ghoulishly fun stuff. A disturbing opening sequence introduces its young, hip couple Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) while explaining without nuance why these two would abandon city life for an opportunity to live in an idyllic Irish countryside home. The random cruelty in this opener is a primer for even more horrific things to come and speaks to the sturdiness of its influences, which somewhat alarmingly include Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs.
Maya and Jamie’s new Irish digs serve as an emotional respite as Maya reaches the last stretch of her pregnancy. It also borders a knotted forest where all sorts of ancient history dwell. And if that weren’t enough, the garden that fences Jamie and Maya from the grim woodlands beyond serves as the final resting place of Aunt Maeve, who left her rural home to Jamie—even though she must have known that his English heritage would rankle some of her neighbors. It does, and soon Unwelcome shifts away from its spooky frights of folklore and, for a time, repositions itself as a not-so-paranoid thriller that pits Jamie and Maya against an obstinate and possibly violent family of builders sired by Colm Meaney. This part of the movie assembles a parade of victims for the slaughter to come, and it’s almost the most fun.
And the truly riotous stuff is still to come. Wright, who has a love for Grimm and practical effects work (his creature makers are the same team who worked on his 2012 alien movie Grabbers), attempts a heightened thematic resonance in Unwelcome. There’s a reach to articulate lingering animosities between the English and the Irish, and it makes feints at themes of post-partum depression. None of it really sticks, but at least Wright makes the attempt; he’s aiming for a bigger splash here than his prior efforts, though—with its ambitious if unconvincing sets and stagey photography—the first hour of Unwelcome might be a tough sell.
For those who stick around for its riotous last forty minutes (and they should; this has the juice to become a Shudder darling), Unwelcome eventually goes about its bloody task. That Peckinpaw influence mentioned earlier gets a structural (re: gendered) twist, and those red-capped beasties finally arrive to sort things out in spectacular, gory fashion. But chief amongst the film’s qualities are its performances, especially John-Kamen’s; as Wright strips his yuppie couple of their urbane assumptions of rural living and leaves them bare and hungry for the natural world that beckons, John-Kamen pushes him aside and decimates with a proper primal scream.
Unwelcome hits theaters on March 10 and streams on March 14.
Directed by Jon Wright.
Written by Mark Stay (from a story by Mark Stay and Jon Wright).
Produced by Piers Tempest and Peter Touche.
Starring Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Colm Meaney, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Kristian Nairn, Chris Walley, Niamh Cusack, Finbar Lynch, and Rick Warden.
Rated R for right scrappy language, mate, and an absolutely bloody last forty minutes.
