Film Review

Unwelcome (2022)

A couple moving from England to Ireland find that some of the local mythology needs to be taken seriously…

Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men (2022) may be the folk horror movie with the loudest buzz right now, but even if fits more straightforwardly into genre conventions, it’s a film of originality and conviction that deserves to be taken more seriously than a glance at the synopsis might suggest. Director Jon Wright’s much-quoted characterisation of Unwelcome as a fusion of Gremlins (1984) and Straw Dogs (1971) is spot-on, as both came to mind while watching before I was aware of his comparison; and while there’s more to it than that, his film manages to introduce some highly fanciful elements into an often tough and uncomfortably realistic story without destroying it.

The premise is one of the most familiar in modern horror: the couple moving to a new home, hoping for better things, and discovering unexpected darkness inside. Examples are countless, but with its Irish setting and the significance of woodland, Unwelcome calls to mind Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground (2019), while the monstrous locals are…