“Unwelcome” Movie Review

 

“Unwelcome”

 

Movie Review

 

 

 

The 2023 folk horror movie Unwelcome was written and co-directed by Jon Wright and Mark Stay. The cast includes Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Jamie-Lee O'Donnell, Colm Meaney, and Kristian Nairn.

 

Jamie and Maya, a young couple, share a home in London. Jamie rejoices with Maya after learning she is pregnant, only to be attacked by a gang of hoodlums. Maya is left unharmed. After the attack, Jamie and Maya take advantage of the opportunity to move to a perfect new home they acquired from Jamie's great-aunt Maeve after her passing in rural Ireland.

 

The house requires some work, requiring them to contact the local Whelan family as builders. They take Niamh's advice to leave a liver offering at the backyard door of the home each night for the Red Caps that live in the forest as a harmless superstition but are concerned nonetheless. Niamh is an old acquaintance of Jamie's aunt.

 

The more time Jamie and Maya spend at the house, the more they discover that Maeve also lost a child; her daughter disappeared when she was only two years old, and the body was never found. This makes Jamie and Maya uncomfortable. Maya asks if the baby was killed during a postpartum depression episode as Niamh relates an old tradition that the baby was lost as part of a contract with the Red Caps to save the life of the child's father.

 

The Whelan family quickly establishes themselves as violent and disturbed; younger kids Aisling and Killian frequently steal little household goods, while elder son Eoin is frequently physically abused by "Daddy" Whelan. A dog once tempts Maya into the woods, where she discovers a stone shrine dedicated to the Red Caps. When she tries to get back to the house, she runs into Eoin, who talks about the abuse he says his father gives him. He tries to attack her when she tries to console him, but the Red Caps—as Maya later names them—suddenly pull him away.

 

That evening, while Maya is visited by a Red Cap who gives her Eoin's head in a plastic bag, Jamie engages in a heated argument with Aisling and Killian in the pub about what happened to their brother. The Whelans attack the house after Jamie returns, shocking the two with this proof that the Red Caps are real and demanding an explanation for Eoin's disappearance. Maya is forced to flee into the woods to call the Red Caps for assistance after being caught trying to leave with Eoin's head as Jamie diverts Daddy Whelan at the front entrance. The Red Caps arrive at the house in response to Maya's plea and engage the Whelans in combat, killing all three as Maya gives birth.

 

On their first night back at the house after the baby has been examined at the hospital, the Red Caps take the baby as payment for their assistance. Following them to the shrine, Maya spots an elderly woman who she later realizes is the long-lost daughter of Jamie's aunt who is being cared for by the Red Caps. Maya kills one of the Red Caps and uses her bare hands to break the elderly woman's skull because she won't let them keep her daughter. As she and her daughter enter the home, Jamie watches in terrified wonder as Maya is purportedly anointed with the dead woman's blood and skull and named the new "Mother Redcap."

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