Unwelcome (2023)

2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Shamrock Aches

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Douglas Booth and Hannah John-Kamen star as Jamie and Maya, a regular couple living in London. Maya finds that she is pregnant and the overjoyed Jamie heads to a corner shop to buy a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne. Instead he and Maya are attacked by a gang of hoodlums. Later, Jamie has unexpectedly inherited a huge house in rural Ireland, and the couple eagerly moves there, hoping to raise their child in more peaceful circumstances. They hire Whelan (Colm Meaney) — who insists on being called "Daddy" — and his grown children, Aisling (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell), her brother Killian (Chris Walley), and the clumsy giant Eoin (Kristian Nairn), to fix up the house. Unfortunately, the Whelans turn out to be a family of nasty bullies and abusers and become a huge burden for the young couple. But even stranger is that their liaison, Maeve (Niamh Cusack), has urged them to leave a "blood offering" every night by the back gate, or something terrible may happen. Essentially we're dealing with Leprechauns here, or "Red Caps," and, despite the spirited filmmaking, keen performances (especially by John-Kamen, Meany, and Nairn), and rich Irish atmosphere, it's ultimately pretty clear how Unwelcome is going to unfold. Moreover, given that we actually like Jamie and Maya, the movie seems awfully cruel toward them. It fails to balance their challenges with victories, and it just beats them down. We walk away from the movie with a vague sense of disappointment.