Unwelcome

Irish director Jon Wright specializes in mashups. His feature debut, the British cult movie Tormented (2009), combined a high-school slasher with a ghost story. Next, he made Grabbers (2012), an alien-invasion comedy about cephalopod-style extraterrestrials that attack a coastal town, only for the locals to realize that getting drunk thwarts the aliens. Wright’s best work remains Unwelcome, a delightfully odd meeting at the intersection of Straw Dogs (1971) and the Leprechaun series. Wright’s 2023 film stitches together aspects of obscure Irish folklore with a home-invasion thriller, a portrait of masculine fragility, and a tale of female empowerment. Indeed, Unwelcome is a lot of things at once. Normally, this might make a film seem overstuffed or too discordant, but it’s among the most raucously funny and morbidly entertaining entries in the usually deadly serious folk horror genre. And among these ideas, Wright’s film remains centered on the trope of provincial folk and the source of their backward beliefs threatening a pair of outsiders. In its amalgamation of genres, the film emerges as a familiar but inspired concoction, reminiscent of many other movies yet unique enough to feel like more than just another fusion of disparate elements.  

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