Okay, what in the hail was this? The premise sounded interesting – a family moved from the United States to a large, old, creepy manor outside of London. Jude Law starred as Rory – a financial trader in NYC. Of course, Law is a great actor, but many of his performances are marred by his tendency to slap slabs of ham in the frying pan. Which reminds me, I still need to compile my list of top ten hams of all time – soon readers, soon! Anywho, very soon in this one he went way over the top playing soccer with his kids in the yard. Forbearance of more to come? We shall see.
Law’s character Rory was British, but the rest of the family was American – his wife Allison played by Carrie Coon, his son Ben played by Charlie Shotwell and daughter Sam played by Oona Roche. His British boss Arthur was played by some guy with a gigantic head – Michael Culkin.
Allison loved horses, had her own and taught riding classes. Uh oh… dreaded horses again. Little did I know how much focus would be spent on them. When they decided to move to England, there was a scene where Allison’s black horse was loaded into transport and it was screaming like a banshee – horrifying!
Once in England, I got the impression that this was going to be a ghost story – it was an old, creepy house and some strange things started to happen. But the title was “The Nest” – something living in the house? Don’t spend much time trying to figure this one out – you won’t be right and it will only add to the astringency of the bitter end.
Of course, things did not go as planned for Rory at work, nor did his wife or kids adjust to the new environment. To appease Allison, Rory had a stable built on the property and bought Allison another black horse. More hideous snorts, whinnies ensued – even a scene where Allison was riding the horse in the morning brisk air and with the sharp angled sunrise sunlight – you could see the horse’s horrendous exhalation – almost like a fire breathing monstrosity. Spine chilling!
Thankfully, the horse unexpectedly keeled over, to the great dismay of Allison. She ran to a local farmer who finished off the ailing horse with a bullet to the head. You’d think that was the last horse scene but nooooo… The last scene was even more puzzling and disturbing.
Anywho, Rory was basically a Ralph Kramden “get rich quick” schemer, and his planned deals at his new job fell apart in rapid succession, leading to a quick spiral downward of money woes and serious squabbles with Allison.
There was a bizarre scene where Rory went to see his mother – and it was very apparent he hadn’t spoken to her in years – she wasn’t even aware of her 10 year old grandson. I suppose the reason this disparate scene was included was to make Rory look even more like a douchebag – piling on the douchery as it were – it was not necessary.
The movie plodded along far too long to a very unsatisfactory ending. Instead of how it actually ended, here is yet another CK improvement (maybe some day Hollywood will listen to good ol’ CK): I would film the entire family inside their house sitting around the dining room table, clapping and giggling like school girls. The sound of a loud fart would pause their revelry, invoke a ridiculously hammy facial expression by Jude, then, with the camera view cutting to the exterior of the house, a spectacular fireball would blow the house to smithereens, followed by uproarious applause and cheering from an unseen peanut gallery. Alas, I can only review these horseshit flicks – not edit them.
Speaking of horseshit – this was a solid 3 piles of steaming dung out of 12.