The Nest

It’s been nine long years since Sean Durkin burst onto the scene with Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene, which fea­tured a star-mak­ing turn from Eliz­a­beth Olsen. His lat­est, The Nest, is an equal­ly chilly affair set in a beau­ti­ful house and cen­tred around a fam­i­ly with seri­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues, although it per­haps lacks the haunt­ing qual­i­ty which made his 2011 debut so memorable.

Jude Law is suit­ably smarmy as Rory O’Hara, a British busi­ness­man who relo­cates his fam­i­ly from Amer­i­ca to Lon­don in order to take advan­tage of the finan­cial mar­ket. His wife Alli­son (Car­rie Coon) is less than thrilled about the move, not least because she’s heard it all before and is rapid­ly los­ing patience with Rory’s con­stant get-rich-quick schemes. But they make the move regard­less along with their chil­dren and Allison’s prized horse, Rich­mond. On arrival, it tran­spires that Rory has paid the rent on a grand but impos­ing coun­try pile, replete with secret pas­sage­ways and creak­ing stairs.

This premise has the mak­ings of a good old-fash­ioned ghost sto­ry, and in a round­about way that’s what The Nest is – though much like Martha Mar­cy May Mar­lene, the threat comes not from super­nat­ur­al forces but human ones. As Rory des­per­ate­ly tries to make their move a suc­cess, the fam­i­ly strug­gles to adjust to their new sur­round­ings, and Alli­son becomes dis­il­lu­sioned with the man she mar­ried. Coon is excep­tion­al, all smoul­der­ing anger and dis­gust, ele­vat­ed by some gor­geous cos­tume design and Mátyás Erdély’s aus­tere cinematography.

Yet some­thing is miss­ing. Although Law and Coon have great chem­istry, and the film does well to touch on how iso­la­tion man­i­fests in men, women and chil­dren alike, the var­i­ous nar­ra­tive strands nev­er quite con­nect, and the con­stant flit­ting between Lon­don and Sur­rey feels unnec­es­sary giv­en the inher­ent cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty of the qui­et­ly men­ac­ing main set­ting. It’s cer­tain­ly a fine piece of craft, but The Nest’s chill­i­ness nev­er amounts to much in the way of emo­tion­al pay­off, leav­ing us yearn­ing for some­thing dark­er and more dramatic.