Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I can’t quite decide what to make of The Nest, a drama that seems to traffic exclusively in subtleties, and which only ever hints at something sinister going on. Is this a thriller? A drama? It’s the latter, I guess, but with a couple of twisted turns that are either impossible to explain or simply sailed right over my head.

The is the first feature film by writer-director Sean Durkin since his 2011 cult-escape drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, and it’s both a little more straightforward and a little more mystifying than that one. An entrepreneur (Jude Law) who has spent ten years in the U.S. with his American family moves them back to his native Britain after ten years, chasing opportunity. He buys a gigantic country estate, gets construction going on horse stables for his wife, and plays the part of a good dad to his two children.

Of course, things are a little more complicated than that—although, what I can’t really decide is, if they are complicated enough to make for a compelling movie. To be fair, relatively slow as its pacing was, I found myself compelled by this movie. On the other hand, I truly cannot think of a single person I would recommend this to you. Perhaps you, dear reader? I mean, do what you want.

The Nest certainly has strong performances going for it. Jude Law can generally be relied on, and this is the first co-lead in a feature for Carrie Coon, whose most memorable roles to date have been on television (Fargo, The Leftovers). She plays Law’s American wife, increasingly frustrated with his insistence on uprooting the family yet again, and with his gradual unraveling as his new position in London does not deliver on what he thought to be its promises.

The kids are a bit older, a teenager and a preteen: Oona Roche as Samantha, and Charlie Shotwell as younger Ben. It’s curious neither of them spend any time at all complaining about being moved from New York to London. Are they really that agreeable? The two kids seem largely just along for the ride, although Sam finds a way to get in touch with her rebellious side.

There are subtle hints that there is something about this very old house that is affecting them all, turning them into basket-case versions of their formal selves. The transition is very gradual, and Sean Durkin never inserts anything into his scrip directly to suggest anything supernatural. The closest is one scene in which Coon turns her back, turns back, and a door is suddenly ajar. That’s it. Well, and the fact that her horse has died, and in a truly bizarre later scene, she finds the horse’s buried body starting to stick out of the ground, and starts trying to dig it out again with her hands.

Really, The Nest is just a family drama, and I’m not certain it succeeds on strictly those terms. It’s like it exists just to the left of family drama, one tiny step closer to thriller, but never any closer than that. Richard Reed Parry’s original score is always just slightly sinister in tone, while Jude Law’s unraveling husband and father keeps making misguided mistakes, and Coon’s increasingly fed up wife reacts. In the end, it’s the children who come to the rescue, sort of, as the film’s final shot settles on bemusing ambiguity.

My guess is how much interest The Nest might hold will depend on how versed you are in its pedigree: how much you like the actors, or how much you’ve liked previous films by those who have made this one. With no knowledge of any of that, I cannot estimate how much interest this film will hold. I do have a feeling it might gain greater depth of meaning upon multiple viewings, except I have no desire to watch it again. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it; I actually kind of did. I just can’t quite figure out why.

*Prospects aren’t looking as good as we thought.*

Overall: B