Hannah John-Kamen in Unwelcome (Well Go USA)

Back in the day, the independent film company Full Moon Features could be counted on to provide ever so slightly (and knowingly) cheesy horror with little social value. There were murderous dolls and puppetry galore and goofy plots, all made with a can-do attitude on a dime store budget. Sometimes they succeeded, and those movies are minor classics (Dollman and Puppet Master.) Essentially, you knew what you were getting: good, pulpy B-movie fun.

Unwelcome attempts to recapture that feeling, though it falls short in multiple ways. Its budget is much bigger, yet it still feels slapdash and amateurish, even if the Irish locales are gorgeous. The script is hokey and kinda-sorta tries to say something about masculinity, but it doesn’t totally commit. When it tries to be a bit goofy, it again doesn’t quite go all the way. It’s only in the last third when the script gets pretty much thrown out the window and the film goes full Full Moon that Unwelcome finally finds a pulse.

Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth) are expectant parents who move from London to the home of Jamie’s late Aunt Mae in rural Ireland. They are thrilled to leave the city for the surrounding rolling hills. It feels like a picture-perfect town with all of the cliched Irish elements: there’s the gentle priest, the town drunk who sings Celtic folk songs as he drunkenly rambles down the road, and, of course, the reprobate family. Finally, there are the wee folk: redcaps, i.e., fairies.

The couple discover a gate in the backyard of Aunt Mae’s house that leads to the woods—Jamie was never allowed past the gate as a child. A good friend of Aunt Mae, Maeve (Niamh Cusack), tries to guide the couple on the ways of the woods. She cheerfully, but adamantly, insists that Maya and Jamie leave blood, or an animal, every single night at their backyard gate as an offering to the redcaps, if they ever need the redcaps’ aid. As expected, situations develop and eventually the redcaps are let loose to the audience’s delight.

As in many low budget films, the producers spring for names in smaller parts. Here, they are Colm Meany, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, and Kristian Nairn as the family hired to fix Douglas and Maya’s roof. They are the town outcasts, who are tolerated but considered troublemakers. They are the actual Big Bad as relations between them and Maya and Jamie deteriorate rapidly. These three bad seeds are the highlight of the film (as far as the humans are concerned). More to the point, they have charisma to spare and run rings around John-Kamen and Booth.

Also, the movie tries to make some sort of statement on the meaning of masculinity. Jamie and Maya were victims of a traumatic home invasion in which Jamie couldn’t really do anything to help his wife. This lit a fire and aroused a temper in him, though it pops out at inopportune moments. Yet Uninvited doesn’t need a message. It just needs to know what it is.

So, the film slogs on until Maya calls the redcaps for help against the troublesome family, and then we get full puppet mayhem. Frankly, it’s adorable, though certainly not in the Muppet kind of way. The throwback feeling of killer puppets, and they are most obviously puppets, committing absolute and brutal mayhem will tickle the heart of any fan of low-budget ’80s and early ’90s horror. The puppet work is fantastic, and the cast clearly are having a blast with it. It lifts this anemic film immeasurably.