In the Before Times, I might have felt a little judgey toward poor Hannah John-Kamen in the trailer for Unwelcome. You had one task! Remember to leave the blood out for the redcaps! But these days I can barely remember to brush my teeth—and my living conditions don’t involve murderous tiny neighbors and a whole town full of people who hate me for moving in. So maybe I should cut her some slack.
Unwelcome, the new film from Grabbers director Jon Wright, stars John-Kamen (Killjoys) and Douglas Booth (Jupiter Ascending) as “a couple who escape their urban nightmare to the tranquility of rural Ireland only to discover malevolent, murderous goblins lurking in the gnarled, ancient wood at the foot of their new garden.”
The goblins are redcaps, which need blood. (If you have read Holly Black’s Folk of the Air trilogy, you may remember that General Madoc was a rather different sort of redcap. But still: blood.) But they aren’t the only threat—when the couple hires a local family to do some work on their house, things seem to get a bit heated.
Wright says he pitched the movie as “a modern revision of Gremlins meets Straw Dogs.” It also stars the constantly excellent Colm Meaney alongside Hodor himself, Kristian Nairn. The effects team includes Shaune Harrison (The Phantom Menace, Avengers: Age of Ultron) and creature designer Paul Catling (Maleficent, Thor). The screenplay is by Mark Stay (Robot Overlords).
Unwelcome creeps into theaters next year.
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Nothing But Blackened Teeth
