Certificate: 15 (strong threat, bloody violence, sexual threat, very strong language). Running Time: 104 mins. UK Distributor: Warner Bros.
WHO’S IN IT?
Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Colm Meaney, Kristian Nairn, Niamh Cusack, Chris Walley, Paul Warren, Rick Warden
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Jon Wright (director, writer), Mark Stay (writer), Piers Tempest and Peter Touche (producers), Christian Henson (composer), Hamish Doyne-Ditmas (cinematographer), Zsófia Tálas (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A British couple moves to a rural Irish cottage, but soon become aware of the unusual creatures in the area…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON UNWELCOME?
Looking at his past filmography, it seems that Belfast-born filmmaker Jon Wright is quite a fan of mixing up different types of genre movies. His debut feature, 2010’s Tormented, was a darkly comedic spin on the teen slasher template; Grabbers, his 2013 follow-up, took a much drunker approach to the classic alien invasion formula; for Robot Overlords in 2015, he gave the sci-fi dystopian genre a family-friendly touch; and now, in 2023 (after bouncing around a couple of prospective dates in 2022, with the trailer debuting well over a year ago), Unwelcome sees him tackling perhaps his most peculiar mish-mash yet. That being, of all things, a slice of Irish folklore with fantastical woodland creatures, combined with the ferocity and communal hostility of Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs.
It is certainly an odd combination, and appropriately enough Unwelcome is an odd movie – but not always in the ways that it intends to be.
The film begins as young British couple, Jamie (Douglas Booth) and Maya (Hannah John-Kamen), discover that they are pregnant – only to be attacked moments later by a gang of thugs from their London estate. They take the opportunity to move over to Ireland, and into a cottage owned by one of Jamie’s relatives who has just died. Once there, they learn of some particularly antagonistic locals, specifically a family of builders led by their intimidating “Daddy” Whelan (Colm Meaney), but also a strange tradition that the couple must always abide by: every night, they must leave a blood offering at the foot of their garden, to appease a small race of creatures known as the “Red Caps” who live deep in the neighbouring woods. Believing it to be a fruitless superstition, the couple ignore the advice – and sure enough, they are soon plagued by not just the very real Red Caps, but also the wrath of the Whelan clan who wage a war against the new outsiders.
In theory, Unwelcome has a solid enough concept. As Wright has shown across his career, he can get some decent entertainment out of pushing together some genres that can be complete polar opposites, and here there is a lot of potential that can come out of making what is essentially Straw Dogs crossed with Gremlins. However, in this case, the filmmaker’s attempt to blend both genres comes across more awkwardly than it does naturally, and it creates a strange tone that doesn’t quite gel. A fine example of this is the film’s cold open, which depicts a brutal domestic assault by cartoonishly nasty street thugs who not even the Daily Mail would believe to actually exist, but is fundamentally so off course with the more tongue-in-cheek and darkly comedic approach that accompanies the rest of the film, that you start to wonder if this sequence was either originally here or added during reshoots (that would explain its mysterious lengthy delays from March to October last year, to finally January of this year). The sequence does have a narrative purpose, largely to set up the couple’s eventual move and to ignite Douglas Booth’s arc of feeling incredibly emasculated by the incident, but in terms of establishing the overall tone, it struggles to get audiences invested right away.
Sadly, this isn’t the only time that Unwelcome feels somewhat off, with a lot of the filmmaking and acting choices also seeming perhaps a little too aware of itself. The cottage set where we spend most of the film feels like exactly that: a studio set, with unnatural outside lighting and what looks like green-screen backdrops to depict the surrounding countryside. It rarely feels like we’re ever truly outside, which I understand is part of Wright’s intended style – itself harkening back to soundstage features from the 70s and 80s that he inevitably grew up with – but it always reminds you that you’re watching a movie instead of actually becoming embedded in this world.
Some bizarre choices with the cinematography, the sound mix (there are a few exposition dumps that have been blatantly added in via ADR) and especially the editing, which cuts away from a crucial moment halfway through and then picks up as though we were meant to have actually seen it, makes it a very confusing sit, which the acting also contributes to. Both Hannah John-Kamen and Douglas Booth are very talented actors, but their direction here appears to simply be as stereotypically posh and, well, British as possible, especially Booth who is straight up doing a Jack Whitehall impersonation throughout. You also have Colm Meaney as a villain who makes frustratingly less sense as he goes along, going one minute from violently assaulting one of his kids (played by Hodor himself, Kristian Nairn) to seeking audiences’ sympathy as he and his family go through the motions of the film’s extended climax.
However, when the Red Caps themselves actually show up, the film almost entirely finds its feet. The creatures themselves are impressively crafted through a neat mixture of practical effects and costumed performers, and they provide some fun laughs just from some of their inflictions and brief but present personalities. They are also central to the film’s absolutely insane conclusion, which almost needs to be seen to be believed, and ends things on such an out-there moment that it almost makes one look at the ending of Enys Men in a whole new appreciative light. Put simply, it is these creatures that provide Unwelcome with much of the bonkers spirit one would have hoped to get out of this crazy genre mish-mash.
Too bad, then, that they didn’t come along early enough to salvage the oddly unbalanced stuff beforehand.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Unwelcome is an oddly unbalanced attempt to blend Irish folklore with the violence and intimidation of Straw Dogs, which in theory could work but is hindered by a strange and inconsistent tone that doesn’t manage to gel the competing genres together, along with filmmaking and acting choices that fail to invest you in the world that is being created, even when some movie-stealing goblin creatures finally show up.
