Unwelcome

A vicious opening ten minutes and there’s’ a distinct feeling that this is going Eden Lake with a vicious home invasion and attack on couple Jamie (Douglas Booth) and his pregnant wife Maya (Hannah John-Kamen). Luckily the next scene they are driving empty Irish roads to the house that Jamie has inherited off his aunt.

Greeted by Maeve (Niamh Cusack) there’s a swift introduction and then out into the garden which has wall separating the property from the forest. With a stout wooden door and a purpose-built hole in the wall viewers won’t be that surprised when Maeve tells them she leaves offerings of liver for the ‘little people’ every evening lest the get angry.

A visit to the local pub introduces them to the town drunk who unwittingly says the wrong thing on the way home and is killed. That however is not on their minds once they have contracted the Whelans for a few jobs around the house. Patriarch ‘Daddy’ (Colm Meaney) leads a rough lot being a vicious sod himself – thinking nothing of beating his son for a simple mistake.

It's not long before Maya goes into the forest which is obviously magical and confirmed by what she finds there. Returning to the house tensions begin to rise between the couple and the Whelans which after a death leads to a Straw Dogs type siege. But there is help at hand for the rural newbies.

Directed by Jon Wright, co-written with Mark Stay, for the most part this is pretty well played by a good cast who apart from Meaney don’t quite get hold of the tone of the film. That will partly be down to Wright and Stay who seem to be trying to blend some very violent images with a dash of bleak humour and not really pulling it off. He does score high on laughs with the ‘little people’ though he will know if this is by his design, or not.

As such this mishmash of Irish folk horror with a fish out of water couple and family secrets, has a lot of familiar ideas strung together on a thin string and is not very original.

However it is quite entertaining not least when the pathetic punning and whining Jamie is put against the crude and violent Whelan clan. As such apart from a few flashbacks the film dumps the real urban horror of the opening sequence for fantasy and slasher gore.

Unwelcome is available now on Shudder.