Being Film #20 for Hooptober 2024
It can be a startling thing when expectations are upended. You think you’re familiar with something, say, a filmmaker based on a particular film. And you hear about their new film, and it looks like it treads similar ground. And it does, except it doesn’t. And in that thin veil of difference can lay everything. So if you’re a fan of Jon Wright and his alien SF/horror fest Grabbers and saw he has a new film, one that ALSO takes place in Ireland and features a bunch of little goblins terrorizing a family, you might think Ah! This should be right up my alley. And it is, but Unwelcome is tonally a very, very different beast, as are its featured villains, most of whom are all too human…
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Jamie and Maya just found out they’re having a baby, but are quite rudely interrupted from celebrating in a way that is triggering to say the least. So off they go to the Irish countryside where Jaime’s Aunt Maeve left them a beautiful cottage. There’s just one catch: every night by the mysterious wall they need to leave a blood offering for the redcaps, mischievous little goblins out of folk legends. Pretty easy, right? Well, what happens when the goblins aren’t the ones needing to be kept at bay? What if there’s simmering resentments and more than a little violence pent up in some of the neighbors, especially the ones you hired to help fix the place up? Pretty soon Jaime and Maya re going to really understand what dangers to look for, what’s in the woods, and how it will all come to build a new family unit they did not bargain for…
Right off the bat, Unwelcome has one of the more terrifying scenes I’ve seen in this viewing season, and it has nothing to do with the supernatural beings that ultimately enter the picture. The genesis of the film’s arc begins with a vicious home invasion where Maya and Jaime are just about to celebrate her pregnancy. From the moment Jaime (a great Douglas Booth) tries to buy some Prosecco his bumps into some thugs outside the store, and it’s immediately tense in a way that made me very uncomfortable. When the violence erupts in their home it’s the first time I was ever triggered – Wright stages this whole sequence like a master, and the Straw Dogs comparisons are very apt. You come away feeling the trauma both Maya and Jaime feel – the helplessness, the terror, the frustration. It’s a bravura sequence that comes back to haunt them when they switch locales.
I want to stay a little longer on Booth for a moment, because while the film is very much centered on Maya and the utterly amazing Hannah John-Kamen, Booth has plenty to dig into with his character. I really resonated with his new preoccupation with boxing, with meditation, with finding every opportunity to work on never letting something that vulnerable happen to him again, and there’s a moment when he explodes at Maya that might be one of the most honest moments of the film.
But while you might love all these things, you’re probably really here for the horror and the creature stuff, and I’m happy to say Wright does a great job, using a mix of forced perceptive, puppets, and ingenious prosthetic to bring the redcaps to malicious life. Things get very gory, very quickly when the films shifts into its final act, and I love how he incorporates John-Kamen into it. She was equally traumatized, and only wants her baby safe. The lengths she goes to in order to ensure that is incredible, and when you see the end, and Jaime’s screams curdling into mad laughter, you’ll be right there with him.
The why of the appearance of the redcaps, and the method in which they’re employed harkens back to the beginning, and I don’t want to spoil more triggering events, but goddamn this might be the creepiest Colm Meaney has ever been in a film. I was completely surprised in the best way by Unwelcome; this is a huge step up for Wright and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Cinema Dual 
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