Produced by Ed Guiney, Rose Garnett, Derrin Schlesinger,
Sean Durkin, Christina Piovesan, Amy Jackson
Written and Directed by Sean Durkin
Starring Jude Law, Carrie Coon,
Charlie Shotwell, Oona Roche, Adeel Akhtar
Rory and Allison O’Hara seem to have it all.
He is an entrepreneur who makes a solid living, while she, a major horse lover, gives horseback riding lessons to local kids.
Their own kids seem like relatively well-adjusted teenagers and the family unit feels fairly close.
But Rory has a major itch he can’t scratch.
The O’Hara’s are mostly staying in the US to be close to Allison’s family, but Rory is becoming increasingly agitated in the States.
He gets an offer from his mentor in England to return there and accept a new position.
Allison and the kids don’t fancy being uprooted and moving to Great Britain, but they concede.
They move into an estate they clearly can’t afford and which everyone but Rory seems to find to large and rather unsettling.
As Rory’s habit of buying symbols of wealth begin depleting their bank account and his sure-thing business ventures begin to unravel, the marriage – and the family unit – starts to reveal cracks in the façade, which quickly develop into fissures.
This movie is a real mixed bag.
On the one hand, the acting is superb. Jude Law and Carrie Coon are wholly believable as the rapidly deteriorating couple, and Oona Roche and Charlie Shotwell are just great as the kids.
The cinematography and direction are, at times, striking. The opening credits feel like the opening to a horror film, and the estate is filmed to heighten tension and discomfort.
The Nest takes place in the Eighties and there are some very fun 80s-era indie pop songs on the soundtrack.
All of these things make The Nest worth watching, but I admit to a creeping letdown as the film hit the home stretch.
It’s a relatively solid work overall, but I’d heard so many great things that I was rather disappointed.
Maybe it was me, perhaps it was my mood, but I found it very difficult to be drawn into the story and even more difficult for me to care.
Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story engaged me a great deal more despite its own flaws and, frankly, I think Cronenberg’s The Brood is a far more interesting depiction of a toxic marriage.
I would still recommend The Nest for the reasons listed above, but don’t buy into the hype and you’ll likely be more impressed than I was.
The Nest is now available on Digital HD
