‘Bizarre’ horror film about mysterious creatures flies up Netflix streaming chart

Horror movies regularly involve the bizarre, the strange, and the uncanny.

From creepy killers to ghastly ghosts and murderous macabre monsters, the genre is jam-packed with the weird and wonderful.

Yet sometimes a film comes along that’s so odd, it catches even the most dedicated horror scholars off guard.

And one such film is currently tearing its way up the streaming charts and ranks fourth on the Netflix top ten.

What’s the film in question?

Well, it’s Unwelcome.

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Directed by Jon Wright and starring Hannah John-Kamen, Douglas Booth, and Colm Meaney, the film follows a young couple who abandon London following a tragedy for the Irish countryside.

However, soon after moving, the pair discover that the locals aren’t as friendly as they had hoped and there’s something strange at the bottom of the garden.

Specifically, they’re told they need to leave an offering in the back garden every night for the Red Caps that live in the forest, otherwise they’ll cause trouble.

Needless to say, the couple quickly forget and let’s just say the Red Caps aren’t happy.

While critics weren’t thrilled by Unwelcome, it does have a respectable 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has its defenders.

Ellen E Jones in The Guardian described it as ‘Straw Dogs meets Fraggle Rock’, calling it an ‘enjoyably unpretentious Irish-ish folk horror.’
John Nugent of Empire magazine, meanwhile, praised the choice to use practical effects.

‘In the CGI era, practical effects are fast becoming a lost cinematic art,’ he wrote.

‘On that basis alone, then, we should be grateful for Unwelcome.’
Professional critics weren’t the only ones impressed by the film.

On IMDb Speepin_Dragon called it ‘bizarrely watchable’.

Weirdest movie monsters

To celebrate Unwelcome’s success, our Deputy Editor Tom Percival has chosen some of the weirdest movie monsters of all time…

• The Red Caps: I don’t want to spoil Unwelcome, but the Red Caps are really quite odd.

  They’re horrifying in their own way but also kind of cute and endearing.

  I think the best way to describe them is to imagine Baby Yoda if he were designed by your edgiest friend.



• The Blob: He’s a blob, that’s pretty weird, isn’t it?

  Did we mention this strange slime monster also dissolves people alive and is smarter than it looks (not exactly hard)?



• The Thing: The Thing from… The Thing might be the weirdest monster in movie history.

  The creature has no set shape, instead stealing the form of other animals it encounters, including people.

  This leads to it taking on a bizarre appearance later in the film when it becomes a dog-human-crab hybrid.

‘It’s a really bizarre mix of horror and comedy, it really is just plain bizarre, overall it’s more good than bad.

At times it’s pretty messed up, and that opening sequence is really quite horrible,’ they continued.

‘The goblins look absolutely amazing, and are probably the film’s strongest element.

Don’t expect any bad CGI or cheap-looking costumes; those guys look pretty cool.’
‘It’s not the straightforward horror I thought it was going to be or the one it started off as,’ added sbcxynkt.

‘Maybe a lot of other people took issue with that.

It quickly becomes a beautiful-looking but slightly creepy fairy tale, before becoming a silly, violent black comedy in the end.

I loved it all.’
Unwelcome is streaming now on Netflix.

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