- Directed by Jon Wright
- Written by Mark Stay, Jon Wright
- Stars Hannah John-Karen, Douglas Booth, Colm Meaney, Kristian Nairn
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes
- Trailer: https://youtu.be/EFQk6Dfff8Q
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a good one that didn’t go exactly where we expected things to go. The practical effects really sold this, and overall we thought it was very entertaining.
Spoilery Synopsis
Maya and Jamie are trying for a baby. The test is positive, which pleases them both. He goes off to buy some non-alcoholic champagne, and a gang outside chases him. They follow him home and beat him up while she hides in the bathroom. They break into the bathroom and assault her as well. Credits roll.
We open on a dead woman outside a little countryside house as the police check out her body. Someone watches them from behind a rock.
That was Jamie’s Irish Aunt Maeve that just died, and she left him the house, which pleases him and Maya; they can move out of their tiny apartment in the stressful city. The woman who shows them the house, also named Maeve, says there’s one more thing they need to know about the place. There’s an old stone door at the back of the property. Every evening before sunset, old Maeve would leave a blood offering here. Just a plate of meat will suffice to satisfy the little people. They are not leprechauns; they’re redcaps. Maya agrees to keep up the tradition.
They’ve got a great hole in the bedroom roof that they never seem to fix. Does it never rain there? They do finally find an available handyman, Eoin Whelen. The villagers are all friendly and very welcoming. Rory, the town drunk, warns Jamie never to leave Maya alone with the Whelans. On the way home, he runs into something bad.
Maeve asks what they left out for the redcaps, and Maya admits that she forgot. Maeve volunteers to do it, but they don’t want the old woman walking all over their property. Maeve says she saw one of the redcaps once, and they’re terrifying. Feeding them is essential. Maya promises to follow through.
The next morning, Daddy Whelan is there to start on the restoration work. Killian Whaley goes through all the draws looking for valuables. When Maya and Jamie go shopping for groceries, she picks up some liver for her offering. They talk to a priest and Maeve, and they find out that old Maeve made a deal with the redcaps to save her husband, and they took her baby. Since then, she was very devoted to “keeping those monsters on the other side of the wall.”
We see that the entire Whelan family is creepy, obnoxious, and maybe bordering on criminals. Daddy Whelan says he’ll straighten them all out. Later, Maya goes through the stone door to see what’s in the woods on the other side. All she finds is Rory’s dog, who leads her to a stone dome covering a long stairway down. She doesn’t go down there.
On the way out of the woods, she talks to Eoin, who complains that Daddy hates him. He cries, and she says the others are bullies. He gets the wrong idea, and bad things happen. Maya comes out of the woods, but Eoin doesn’t. She tells Jamie what happened; that the redcaps saved her and killed Eoin. Jamie’s got PTSD from the attack in the city, and the stress of dealing with the Whelans is getting to him.
Jamie goes to the pub and hears Killian and Aisling trying to call Eoin on the phone, with no response. They press Jamie who they think knows something, which he does, but he denies it. They don’t believe him, and Maeve and the townspeople kick them out of the pub. Maya has a flashback, and we see what happened to Eoin. One of the redcaps comes into the house and drops off a bag containing Eoin’s head. She shows Jamie, who thinks maybe she did it.
The Whelans come knocking. They want answers about Eoin. Through some pure stupidity, they find the bag with the head. Maya runs into the woods wanting help from the redcaps as the Whelans break in for Jamie. Killian and Jamie fight until Jamie starts crying. He tells Daddy about the redcaps, and Daddy’s not a believer.
Maya finds the stone beehive and tells the little people inside, “I’ll give you anything you want.”
One of the redcaps attacks Killian, but he thinks it’s a monkey or a rat. Daddy kills one of them. Maya returns to the house just as her water breaks. Aisling kicks her in the face and chokes her. Half a dozen more redcaps make short work of her. Daddy watches Killian die.
Jamie makes his way outside, past a bunch of the creatures, and finds Maya in labor. Daddy approaches with a shotgun, and this time, Jamie mans up and goes after him– until Daddy shoots him. Rory the dog jumps in and saves them until Maya can get the shotgun. Boom!
Maya gives birth as the redcaps drag away all the bodies. They say “Feast!”
Jamie and Maya start cleaning up the blood and making repairs on the house. Then the redcaps come for the baby. She chases them through the woods to their lair, and this time, she goes down the stairs to their underground chambers. She finds the baby, alongside old Maeve’s child taken years ago, and who is now an old woman herself.
Maya gets violent, and the old woman is killed. The redcaps bow down to Maya now. She gets to stay, and the baby is returned to Jamie. “Mama Redcap!”
Commentary
The moral of the story is clearly, “Don’t go to a liquor store after dark.” I got that even before the credits.
Jamie may be the most worthless leading man in a horror movie ever. I can’t believe he survived.
The setup is very clear and the creature effects are really good. From the trailer, we were expecting the monsters to go after Maya for forgetting to feed them, but that’s not it at all. The final ending was really clear; we know what the redcaps wanted all along, and they got it.
I liked this a lot more than I thought it would, mostly because of the creature effects.