Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Jon Wright
Starring: Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, Colm Meaney, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Chris Walley, Kristian Nairn, Niamh
Cusack
"What happened to not perpetuating stereotypes?" one character asks of
another in Jon Wright's Irish-set horror (comedy?)
Unwelcome. Indeed. Most stereotypical depictions of Ireland have been the product of
misty-eyed British and American filmmakers, who might claim Irish heritage
but who have clearly never set foot in the country. I'm not sure what
Wright's excuse is, as he's from just across the border in Northern Ireland,
but his depictions of the Republic of Ireland are as bad, if not worse, than
anything found in the films of John Michael "I'm real Oirish innit"
McDonagh.
Wright scored an international hit with his 2012 Tremors on
an Irish island comedy Grabbers. That film was beloved by international audiences, but for us in Ireland
it was another cringey collection of drunken Irish stereotypes (listening to
American podcasters talk of how charming and quaint they found the movie was
maddening to my Irish ears). That said, Grabbers may well be
responsible for the current wave of Irish horrors, so perhaps it was worth
it to eventually get worthwhile Irish genre representation in the likes of
A Dark Song
and
You Are Not My Mother.
Wright returns to Ireland with Unwelcome, and continues to trade in tone deaf stereotypes. But while
Grabbers might be dismissed as a bit of fun, there's something
malicious in Wright's depiction of an Irish Traveller-coded family. For
those unfamiliar with the social dynamics of Ireland, Travellers are an
ethnic group who live in caravans and are usually negatively stereotyped as
thieves and violent criminals (see Guy Ritchie's Snatch for a
particularly crude example). Wright does nothing to dismiss that stereotype
here - his Traveller family, led by Colm Meaney's Daddy Whelan - are
indeed thieves and violent criminals. Just to make things even more tone
deaf, the heroes of Wright's film are English. It's not so much a case of
"read the room" as "have you ever even entered the room?"
Our English protagonists are Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth), who discover the former is pregnant on the same night that their London
council estate flat is terrorised by a gang of chavs who badly beat the
couple. Maya and Jamie find a way out of the English capital when the
latter's aunt dies and leaves her nephew her home in the Irish countryside.
"It's so green," Jamie remarks in awe, because there's famously no grass in
England.
Maya and Jamie fall instantly in love with the sizeable cottage they've
inherited, but along with a hole in the roof it has another catch. Local pub
landlady Maeve (Niamh Cusack) informs the couple that Jamie's aunt
believed in "the little people." Not your common or garden harmless
leprechauns mind, but the "fear dearg", malevolent little shits who will
steal your baby if you don't leave them a blood offering in the form of a
small slice of liver left at the bottom of the garden each night. Maya and
Jamie agree to carry on this tradition to appease Maeve, but of course they
fail to follow through, unleashing the fear dearg, who set their sights on
the child Maya is soon to give birth to.
Right there we have the makings of a potentially fun horror romp in the
vein of Gremlins and its various 1980s imitators. But Wright
gets sidetracked with the introduction of the Whelan clan, whom Maya and
Jamie employ to fix up the house. Along with the broadest "lazy Irish
worker" stereotypes since Fawlty Towers, the Whelans are portrayed as a menacing bunch, even potential rapists. It
seemed like we were in for a fun Irish riff on Gremlins, but instead we get a third-rate Straw Dogs knockoff.
Booth's Jamie is a poor substitute for Dustin Hoffman's
emasculated-to-the-point-of-cracking anti-hero, and the film never quite
knows what to do with his character in terms of a study of modern
masculinity. Along with Straw Dogs, Peter Weir's The Plumber feels like an influence on this
distracting sub-plot, with Meaney's Daddy Whelan seeming to revel in testing
the patience of his too-polite-to-complain employers, but Wright fails to
extract any of the cringe-comedy that Weir mined so capably from the
scenario.
Unwelcome is an odd duck. Wright clearly knows the
stereotypes and cliches of the rural horror movie. At one point Jamie and
Maya pay their first visit to the local pub, where they're initially met by
silence from the locals in the manner of
An American Werewolf in London, only for the locals to suddenly burst into applause. Yet ultimately
Wright is happy to trade in some of the worst stereotypes surrounding not
just Irish people, but rural dwellers in general. There was an opportunity
here for Wright to be very Irish and take the piss out of everyone equally,
critiquing the small-minded anti-Englishness that persists in some corners
of Ireland while also mocking the ignorance of the English towards their
neighbours, particularly those who like Jamie, insist on calling themselves
Irish. Instead Wright consistently punches down, none more so than a subplot
involving Daddy Whelan's mentally challenged adult son, whom Maya shows
affection for only to receive his unwanted sexual attention. It's a
mean-spirited turn in a movie that has been played largely for laughs up to
that point.
When the fear dearg do eventually show up, after what feels like an age,
it's a late reminder of the monster movie we might have gotten. Looking a
lot like the goblin that terrorised a young Drew Barrymore in Stephen King
anthology
Cat's Eye, they're a wonderful creation of physical effects and a reminder of just
how neglected Ireland's rich mythology has been by filmmakers. Wright's film
may be an unfocussed mess that can't decide what tone it's aiming for, but a
sequel that's happy to eschew the knuckle-headed social commentary and
simply deliver monster movie thrills wouldn't be unwelcome.
