Welcome back, goblins and ghouls, to the fourth annual installment of SpookyJawn! Each October, our love of horror fully rises from its slumber and takes over the MovieJawn website for all things spooky! This year, we are looking at ghosts, goblins, ghouls, goths, and grotesqueries, week by week they will march over the falling leaves to leave you with chills, frights, and spooky delights! Read all of the articles here!

by Samantha McLaren, Staff Writer

In his book Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, sociologist Michael Hechter outlines how the unification of the British Isles represented not only a loss of Celtic sovereignty, but also a diminishment of Celtic identity as the colonial power (England) tried to force homogeneity through anglicization. The effects of this process have been long lasting. Today, hundreds of years after the Acts of Union, undercurrents of anti-English sentiment and separatist rumblings still run through Scotland and Wales; within my lifetime, 45% of Scots voted for the country to reclaim its independence. But nowhere are the aftershocks of Celtic suppression more evident than in Ireland, an island divided in its loyalties, split by a hard-fought border that serves as a permanent reminder of its troubled past. 

Anyway, with that background out of the way, let’s talk about goblins. 

This is all relevant, I promise, because director Jon Wright’s goblin-forward folk horror flick Unwelcome (2023) has something to say about the uneasy relationship between England and its neighbors. Co-written by Wright and Mark Stay, the film uses creatures from Celtic folklore to explore complex questions around national identity, ownership, and who exactly gets to decide whether or not you belong. 

Unwelcome centers around Maya (Hannah John-Kamen) and Jamie (Douglas Booth), two young English folks in love living in a sketchy estate in London. After the couple are violently attacked in their flat, they no longer feel safe in the city, especially since Maya has just found out that she’s pregnant. Happily, Jamie’s great aunt recently passed away and left him her home in the Irish countryside, so the pair pick up sticks and go where the grass and the clovers are greener. 

Their arrival is met with enthusiasm from many of the locals. Wright and Stay’s script plays on the horror trope of rural communities being insular and hostile toward outsiders; upon entering the local pub, Maya and Jamie are initially greeted with silence and stony stares, before the locals erupt into jovial laughter and proceed to gush over the expectant couple, insisting that Maya take a bag of baby clothes while pushing a Guinness into Jamie’s hands. 

But not everyone is so pleased to see them. Since the house they’ve inherited is in disrepair, Maya and Jamie hire a local family, the Whelans, to help fix it up, unaware of the clan’s bad reputation in the village. The family as a whole are rude, arrogant, and at times dangerous, with Kristian Nairn’s Eoin — initially the most sympathetic — even assaulting the heavily pregnant Maya in the woods. However, it’s the reaction of siblings Killian (Chris Walley) and Aisling (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell) that is the most telling. 

“Ais, how many times have the English come to this country and told us what’s ours is now theirs?” Killian asks in response to Jamie telling them to move so he can enter his house. Aisling replies “Too many, Killian,” later adding: “seems to me that when the English like the look of something, they either buy it cheap or send an army in to steal it.” 

Jamie responds to these comments in just about the worst way possible. With grinning dismissal, he first asks them if they would “like some ketchup for the massive chip on [their] shoulder,” before saying the words that every tourist just can’t help but spout when visiting the Emerald Isle: “I’m actually Irish.”

Jamie is not a tourist and does in fact have a little Irish blood in him, though not a lot (“it’s like being in the presence of Michael Collins himself,” Killian jokes, referencing the Irish revolutionary). Still, his poor response to the barbs from the Whelans struck a nerve with me. 

I’m not Irish. But I am Scottish, and let me tell you that the lead-up to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 was an exercise in learning to grin and bear it while English politicians and newspapers dismissed Scotland’s desire for self determination as silly, quaint, and unrealistic. At the same time, the guests who passed through the tourist information office where I worked were often quick to tell me that they were “Scottish” (typically on their great-great-great-great-great grandmother’s side twice removed, of course), eager to claim Celtic heritage for the novelty, but with no real desire to engage in or even understand Scottish issues. It’s a situation that I know many Irish peers are well familiar with, and one that can get quite wearisome. So however unlikeable Killian and Aisling are in Unwelcome and however unjustified they may be to conflate this harmless couple with an invading force, I can’t deny there’s a small part of me that bristles whenever Jamie opens his mouth. 

But what the hell does all this have to do with goblins, you ask? Perhaps more than first meets the eye. 

Unwelcome’s goblins are introduced through a hushed warning from barkeep Niamh (Niamh Cusack), who informs Maya and Jamie that it would be in their best interests to leave a small offering of liver at the bottom of their garden every night to appease the other locals who live in the woods. Locals of the… smaller variety. 

These creatures are the redcaps, also known as the far darrig (a derivation of fear dearg) in Ireland and as powries or dunters in Scotland. As Niamh herself explains, “the far darrig are not jolly little elves.” They are, in fact, malevolent goblins who, in most versions of the legend, dip their caps in the blood of their victims to give them their distinctive red hue. In Unwelcome, they’re actually quite helpful when a person is in dire need — but there’s always a price to pay for that help.

Unwelcome brings its goblins to life primarily through “short actors wearing costumes, and latex masks,” often on oversized sets. The practical effects and whimsical silliness of the redcaps, juxtaposed with their gleeful violence, makes them incredibly endearing to watch. But their existence also casts new light on the conflict between the Whelans and their English neighbors. 

The redcaps are ancient creatures. They seem to have existed on the land—or, perhaps, beyond the land—since long before the Whelans or Jamie’s Irish relatives ever stepped foot on it. If claim is to be laid, then the redcaps have a stronger case for ownership than either party.

And they don’t seem to want humans gone. While they will happily kill unpleasant trespassers, like the attempted rapist Eoin or the drunk who made an off-color comment about Maya’s breasts in the bar, the redcaps seem to have a “live and let live” attitude about people existing on their land, so long as they get their nightly plate of liver.

Perhaps that makes the redcaps more akin to landlords than the friendly folks that Maya and Jamie encounter in the pub. However, crucially, these creatures are also happy to welcome certain outsiders into their world. 

When Maya makes a devil’s bargain to save her family from the Whelan’s escalating violence, the redcaps gladly dispatch the vulgar family in gloriously bloody fashion. In return, they want Maya’s baby daughter to come and live with them. And since Maya is unwilling to give the child up, they accept the English woman as their new “Mother Redcap” instead, baptizing her in blood poured from a floating skull. 

Far from being the English invader that the Whelans viewed her and her husband as, Maya ends Unwelcome having been accepted by the locals—all the locals—as one of their own. In the process, she becomes part of the folklore of the land, a chapter in the story of the redcaps that will likely be passed down for generations. Where she’s from matters less than where she is now. Horrific as her fate is, it’s also beautiful, because she’s home. 

I voted “yes” in the Scottish independence referendum all those years ago, frustrated by the pittance of power that England allows my country to have over our own destiny. But for all the valid arguments there are to be made about the English government’s treatment of Scotland and Ireland over the years, at the level of individuals, things aren’t so black and white. Unwelcome shows us that Ireland’s story goes back further than the people who fight over it, and it’s still being written. 

And maybe, just maybe, there’s room for everyone in that tale.