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Is there any hope for Rory and Allison? That's the question at the heart of "The Nest," a wrenching, beautiful drama about a married couple who relocate from upstate New York to a drafty old estate near London, where their union unravels.

The marriage of Rory and Allison ( Jude Law and Carrie Coon ) was already frayed. But the spouses were so comfortable with the family's routines, and so immersed in their own pursuits (he's an investment banker, she raises horses and teaches riding), that the warning signs didn't register. Their relocation to England, where Rory grew up, is a black light pointed at a crime scene: it's impossible not to see everything that's gone wrong.

Their kids see it, too. The eye-rolling teenage disaffection of their elder daughter, Sam ( Oona Roche ), a girl fathered by Allison's first husband, becomes overt once the move to England is complete, and slowly turns into blatant cynicism, hostility, and rebellion. Roche's narrow-eyed stare whenever her parents have a go at special pleading is one of the film's most devastating recurring images: her face is judgment. Rory and Allison's youngest, the sweet and sensitive Ben ( Charlie Shotwell ), withdraws into himself, and you may start to fear for his physical safety (especially if you've seen " Ordinary People "; the actor has a young Timothy Hutton vibe).

Writer/director Sean Durkin (" Martha Marcy May Marlene ") has delivered the cinematic equivalent of those substantial, long-yet-not-too-long short stories that says everything about its subject without actually saying everything; or, perhaps conversely, a poem or song that takes you through stages/aspects of a magnetic but destructive relationship (like Stephen Sondheim's "Sorry Grateful" from Company , or Bob Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" from Blood on the Tracks ). Durkin's script and direction are as economical and exact as they are compassionate and merciless, feeling for these characters without pandering to the audience by constantly proclaiming their lovability. The cinematography (by Mátyás Erdély ), editing (by Matthew Hannam ) and score (by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry) are all on the same page, it seems. There's nothing fussy about any creative choice.

As devastating as "The Nest" often is, the sheer beauty of individual moments is still elating. And that beauty is encapsulated in the simplicity and rightness of what each moment choose to focus on, whether it's the sounds of Rory's anxious breathing and his dress shoes crump-crump ing on a gravel road as he walks home in silhouette at dawn after staying out in the city all night; or the creeping zoom shots that make it seem as if an unseen, icy intelligence is surveilling the family; or the wide shot of the drunk, rebellious Allison dancing alone among strangers in a nightclub; or the long shot of Ben hiding in a cluttered room to escape his sister's unauthorized, decadent party; or anything involving Allison and her beloved horses.

Law (who co-produced and championed the film) gives one of his greatest performances as Rory. The character feels like the sum total of every major role he's played till now, from the Gatsby-like golden boy in the "The Talented Mr. Ripley" to the title character in the remake of " Alfie " to Pope Pius XIII on HBO's "The Young Pope" (the ultimate salesman). There's a touch of "Mad Men" hero Don Draper in here as well: Rory grew up working class to poor, and is great at using his looks and charisma to sell things; but he sucks at details, and he's so obsessed with appearing prosperous that he neglects the mathematical facts of what things cost, and pulls his wife and kids into ill-advised gambles.

Burt Lancaster fans will appreciate the project's spiritual kinship with Lancaster's late cult classic " The Swimmer "—not just because of the "Mad Men" connection (that series' writers often turned to John Cheever's fiction for inspiration), but because of the script's keen balance of direct factual observation (here is what the characters did, action by action, line by line) and plausibly-deniable allusions to mythology, legend, and scripture (you think about what things "mean," in a larger sense, even though the film/story never footnotes things for you). Law's performance is Lancaster-ish, or "Swimmer" adjacent, as well, in that it's animated not just by a set of choices, but a philosophy, a vision of life—and perhaps also a self-inventory that connected the character of Rory to aspects of himself, as flattering or unflattering as the resulting realizations must have been.

Coon equals and in some ways exceeds Law here. It's the more altogether impressive performance because she's comparatively new to us (her breakthroughs were on HBO's "The Leftovers" and the third season of FX's " Fargo "). As Allison, she gives as performance as grounded, nervy, vulnerable, and technically flawless as any we've seen from more established actresses, and in a different mode from the roles that put her on critics' and viewers' radar.

Coon has four, maybe five scenes in "The Nest" where her work is so focused and simple (in the sense of being direct and unadorned, not crude or simplistic) that they could stand for the movie in its totality. The greatest is a dinner scene near the end of the film. Rory has cajoled and compelled Allison to accompany him as he and a coworker, Steve (a sturdy and affecting supporting performance by Adeel Akhtar ), to help them win over clients who could bring a lot of money into their company. Rory, who's wracked by financial instability and marital desperation at that point, tries way too hard, essentially giving a bad performance as Rory. He presents himself as a man of culture and taste who appreciates the finer things, but comes off as a yob cosplaying a sophisticate. Allison, who's had enough of his delusions, can't play along anymore, and lets her seething resentment of Rory escape in biting asides, like steam puffs from a kettle that's about to shriek.

This is a lead performance in the vein of Gena Rowlands' work with John Cassavetes in the 1970s. It's not just the character's closed-off intensity or nervous cigarette smoking or feathery blond hair that puts the comparison across. It's the way Coon lets you not just understand but feel what Allison is feeling—not in a showy or hand-holding way, by indicating or underlining or calling attention to the technical part of the performance; but seemingly without any forethought having been given to how the viewer could perceive anything—indeed whether anyone might be watching at all. You feel Allison in the way that you'd feel what a close friend was feeling if you were in the same room with her.

This is not the same thing as saying it's an agreeable or light or upbeat performance. Allison is a lot to take. She loves her kids and seems like a fundamentally decent person. But she's in denial about her own materialistic tendencies (which she offloads onto the more flagrantly acquisitive Rory). And she's so wrapped up in herself and her disintegrating, codependent marriage that she doesn't really notice her kids' pain in the way that a mother should.

That being said, she's a far better mother than Rory is a father. And, maybe because break-up stories with a charismatic antihero tend to pull sympathy towards the husband/boyfriend—is this encoded in the gendered nature of mainstream filmmaking, or the culture at large?—Durkin gives us just one scene where "The Nest" tells us what to think: a cabdriver listens to Rory's self-serving tale of woe and calls bullshit. "I'm a good father," Rory says, in a drunken whine, then goes on to declare that he puts food on the table and roof over his children's heads. "That's the bare minimum you should do, mate," the cabdriver says, in a prelude to one of the most unexpectedly satisfying bits of almost-extradramatic commentary I've seen in a mainstream drama: the cabdriver, standing in for the viewer, and for everyone in Rory's life, says, in effect, "Enough. We're done."

"The Nest" clocks in at a brisk hour and forty-five minutes. But in the memory, it feels much longer (in a good way), because every scene, moment, line, and gesture stands for so many things at once, and exists on so many levels at once, without making a big deal of how much data and meaning is being conveyed. (That the story is set in the 1980s, the era of go-go Reaganism and Thatcherism, prepares us for a lecture on capitalism's failures that never arrives; this is a period movie, not a thesis statement.) The result ranks with cinema's best martial break-up stories, up there with " Shoot the Moon " (likewise built upon a Yankee-Brit union). The final scene—set, as in so many perfect movies about the complexity of family relationships, at the breakfast table—is just right. It ends on a note of potentiality, not certainty. This lets viewers argue for or against the possibility (or advisability) of the marriage repairing itself or accepting failure and moving on.

By the time the end arrives, the parents, the children, and the viewers are in alignment about the state of things. The relief that accompanies such a realization lets a tale of escalating discomfort end on a note of—well, not "hope," exactly. Realism? Acceptance. Like driving around in a car that's been neglected for months or years and that has a lot of things wrong with it, then finally admitting—on the side of the road, in the rain, in the dark—that you'd ignored warning signs for too long, and have no one to blame for this disaster but yourself.

You don't root for anyone in this movie. It's not the sort of movie that cares whether you approve of its characters—only that you understand them.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

The Nest (2020)

Rated R for language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and teen partying.

107 minutes

Jude Law as Rory

Carrie Coon as Allison

Adeel Akhtar as Steve

Sean Durkin

Cinematographer

Mátyás Erdely
Matthew Hannam

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‘The Nest’ Review: New Home, Old Wounds

In Sean Durkin’s film, a move to Britain widens a family’s rifts.

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By Ben Kenigsberg

“The Nest” is the first feature Sean Durkin has written and directed since his formidable debut, the cult-detox drama “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (2011). The long wait burdens the new movie with high expectations.

In contrast to the dreamlike subjectivity of “Martha Marcy,” “The Nest” is a coldly observational study of a Reagan-Thatcher-era family divided in ambitions, nationality and — with respect to the children — parentage. The British Rory (Jude Law), a rapacious financier in the United States, talks his American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), into moving to England with their kids (Oona Roche and Charlie Shotwell). Without consulting her, he splurges on a farm mansion in Surrey whose ludicrously large and creepy grounds have little use beyond projecting ultra-conspicuous consumption.

Allison resents Rory’s paternalism and British society’s encouragement of it, and Coon embodies an extraordinary range of self-loathing, simmering anger and doubt. Durkin smartly leans on her performance, in a long take, for instance, that observes her face as she realizes Rory misled her about his job offer’s origins. Law, though, is miscast. He has the smarm but not the charm of a compulsive grifter, even a hapless one. In a grimly funny scene, he unsuccessfully pitches his estranged mother (Anne Reid) on meeting her grandson, now 10.

In technique, “The Nest” is severe but unimpeachable, from the carefully paralleled shots of Law awaking Coon at different houses to the Cesca chairs that subtly signify comfort (and time period) at family meals, notably the breakfast scenes at the beginning and end. If Durkin’s writing doesn’t always match his formal flair, “The Nest” has a bracing economy, cramming a lot into tight quarters.

The Nest Rated R. Sex, marital fights and the pitiless treatment of a horse. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

Review: In ‘The Nest,’ Jude Law and Carrie Coon give us an unnerving anatomy of a marriage

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The Los Angeles Times is committed to reviewing new theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries inherent risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials. We will continue to note the various ways readers can see each new film, including drive-in theaters in the Southland and VOD/streaming options when available.

“The Nest,” Sean Durkin’s beautifully chilled second feature, opens on a house in a 1986 New York suburb, with two cars in the driveway, a pool in the backyard and a faint breeze rustling the foliage. It’s the dawn of a new morning for Rory O’Hara (Jude Law), who peers distractedly out the window as he makes a phone call, one that will upend the seemingly contented, comfortable life he’s built for himself and his family. Is that dissatisfaction we see in his face as he surveys his surroundings? Or is it anxiety, even desperation — an awareness that even when he doesn’t have nearly enough, it could all be taken away from him in an instant?

As Law’s performance shrewdly suggests, the answer lies somewhere in between. Within moments, Rory springs an idea on his wife, Allison (a brilliant Carrie Coon), that turns out to be a done deal: They’re moving to the U.K., where Rory grew up, and where he plans to seize a lucrative new opportunity at a London trading firm. Allison is slow to come around, but come around she always does; this is the family’s fourth move in a decade and by far their most drastic. That becomes clear when Rory gives his wife and their two children, Samantha (Oona Roche) and Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell), a tour of the manor house he’s rented in the Surrey countryside, complete with 17th century woodwork and a stable where Allison, a riding instructor, can keep her horse.

You know what they say about something that looks too good to be true, and that might even be overstating things in the case of the O’Haras’ new home, a sparsely furnished cavern of a house that suggests the backdrop of a domestic horror movie. And in a way, that’s precisely what it is. No jump scares are pending, fortunately, though the measured rhythms of Matthew Hannam’s editing and the brooding dissonances of Richard Reed Parry’s score might lead you to suspect otherwise. The gorgeously shadowy images accentuate the story’s narrative resemblance to “The Shining,” even borrowing a few of Stanley Kubrick’s gliding camera moves and symmetrical compositions. (The picture was shot on 35-millimeter film by Mátyás Erdely, the Hungarian cinematographer known for his bravura work on László Nemes’ “Son of Saul” and “Sunset.” )

Durkin’s formal smarts were already apparent from his brilliantly destabilizing 2011 debut feature, “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” which used eerie imprecisions of time, narrative and geography to suggest the irreparable splintering of a young woman’s psyche. The antagonist in that movie — apart from perhaps Martha, Marcy May or Marlene herself — was nonetheless readily identifiable as a murderous sex cult, a malevolent external force. Physical violence was also the primary threat in the 2013 British miniseries Durkin directed, “Southcliffe,” a multithreaded crime drama set in motion by a deadly shooter’s senseless rampage.

Although it flirts with the conventions of cinematic horror, “The Nest” is a drier, subtler exercise in creeping dread. Its refusal to give concrete definition to the menace at hand, which will surely be a source of frustration for some, is also a sign of Durkin’s growing confidence. He attends to the details of his characters’ home life and their ’80s milieu with such matter-of-fact specificity — the longish haircuts, the slightly oversized fashions, the snatches of Heart, New Order and the Psychedelic Furs on the soundtrack — that you may not fully see the emotional abyss he has quietly opened beneath them.

And despite the compressed time frame, the O’Haras have been sitting astride that abyss a while. You sense it immediately in the sibling solidarity that binds Samantha and Benjamin, the alliance they’ve quietly struck against the ever-looming specter of their parents’ unhappiness. And you feel it in every interaction between Rory and Allison, whose tender moments and still-passionate sex life conceal deep stress fractures, worn down by unending patterns of doubt and distrust.

On the one hand, the impending collapse of their finances and their marriage is clearly Rory’s fault: He’s a reckless spender and an unreliable provider, and his need to seem rich and cultured in front of his associates goes hand-in-hand with a string of disastrous business decisions. In a recent MEL Magazine essay , the critic Tim Grierson noted that Law, a gifted actor who was perhaps prematurely sold to the public as a movie star, seems almost too ideally cast these days as scoundrels and strivers — men who are “either humbled or indignant because their lives didn’t exactly work out.” His wrenching performance here feels like a furious rejection, and thus an inevitable confirmation, of that assessment.

“You’re exhausting,” Allison tells Rory, and indeed he is, like Icarus and Sisyphus rolled into one. She’s made of tougher stuff, whether she’s secretly hoarding cash to pay the household bills, dealing with Benjamin’s anxieties and Samantha’s moods, or tending to her ailing horse, whose sudden decline sounds a blunt but effective note of symbolic foreboding. But if we are lured more readily to Allison’s side, the movie doesn’t entirely absolve her of her responsibility, her own willingness to suspend her better judgment and deny the truth about the feckless man she married. Coon gives us a minutely detailed study in slow-motion disillusionment: Watch her expression almost imperceptibly darken at one of Rory’s swanky work functions, when she silently absorbs the latest of his many lies; some weeks later, at another dinner with his colleagues, she’s in no mood to maintain the charade.

It’s no accident that their tensions seem to flare most openly in public, at events whose stiff formality brings out a defiant bluntness, even blowsiness, in Allison. Their tensions may be rooted, abstractly, in the materialist greed and prescribed gender roles of their particular decade, but they are also born of differences in class and culture. You can picture their fairy-tale romance before it went sour; she was swept off her feet by a dashing Brit and he fell hard for “a beautiful blond American girl.” He utters those words in the movie’s most revelatory scene (featuring a dark, chiseled gem of a performance from Anne Reid), in which Rory peers into the shadows of his own unhappy childhood and finds a cold, indifferent void staring back at him.

At times it seems that void will swallow “The Nest,” which is borne along on such forceful undercurrents of rage, insecurity and despair that it seems destined to spiral toward tragedy. I’ll say no more, except to note that what makes Durkin’s vision so powerfully unsettling is its ease with ambiguity, its ability to make cruelty and tenderness seem like flip sides of the same human coin. The last shot pointedly answers the first one, with the dawn of another morning: Nothing has been resolved but everything has been laid bare. Whether that strikes you as horrific or oddly hopeful, it feels awfully close to home.

Rated: R, for language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and teen partying Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes Playing: Starts Sept. 18, Vineland Drive-in, City of Industry; the Frida Cinema, Santa Ana; Regency Directors Cut Cinema at Rancho Niguel, Laguna Niguel; and in general release where theaters are open

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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What Is Cinema?

The Nest Is One of the Best Films of the Year

When I first saw the new film The Nest (in theaters on September 18, available digitally November 17), it played as tragedy. All the way back at Sundance—a flickering memory from a distant, lost age—I regarded Sean Durkin ’s stately, restrained work as a grim tale of economic ruin. Jude Law plays a scheming businessman, or perhaps conman, who moves his wife ( Carrie Coon ) and children ( Oona Roche and Charlie Shotwell ) back to his native England, with the plan to make a mint in the slowly modernizing London business sector. Things fall apart, the family fractures. I left the film chilled and anxious.

I watched it again this week, after months of so many real things falling apart, and the film played differently, to surprising effect. Its bleak mechanics were still there; Law’s Rory is still a shifty liar, Coon’s Allison still drowns in her own compromise, the kids Samantha and Benjamin still spin off into isolated neglect. But buried under all that—something unearthed by the end of Durkin’s exquisitely modulated film—is a weird, weary kind of hope. The family bottoms out, and will need to wrestle their way back up to the surface somehow. But still, they’re there, warts and resentments and all.

The Nest is a complex movie, despite its economical size. At initial glance, it is mostly just the story of a family moving, sort of for Dad’s job, and not finding what they like in their new environment. It’s not terribly far off from a great Simpsons episode about the same thing. But what Durkin does so smartly—as he did in his debut feature and most recent film, Martha Marcy May Marlene —is fill the picture with a creeping atmosphere that implies deeper, danker things beyond what we’re seeing in literal form.

At many points in The Nest, it seems possible that the film is going to become a haunted-house horror. Or maybe it will become the story of a confidence man’s awful comeuppance, a house of lies coming tumbling down terribly. Yet that’s all mere, and useful, genre suggestion. The Nest keeps calmly insisting that, sure things could go even screwier—but what we’re seeing is plenty bad, and plenty scary already.

Working with cinematographer Mátyás Erdély , Durkin casts his film into the dark. In some scenes, people speaking stand unlit, in shadows, just as they might in a real living room in a real crumbling English manor house while arguing about the survival of the family experiment. Durkin’s compositions are nervy and signature, but not showy. There’s no jazzy or audacious visual language to The Nest , though it is thrillingly assured. The film is a pleasure to look at even as it envelops its characters in gloom.

Law plays Rory as a charmer possessed of irksome, daredevil hubris. It’s plain to see how he can easily ingratiate himself into dealmaking jobs, promising windfalls for his superiors and cohorts. The fantasy he’s selling—classy but greedy, rapacious yet tastefully so—is appealing to the swells and suits he’s chatting up. But we also detect, because Law so carefully introduces it into the character, the sweaty, sorry motivation behind all his solicitous posturing. Rory isn’t quite pathetic; Durkin and Law rescue him from that. We’re repulsed by his lying and scrambling, yes, but frightfully understanding of it too.

It’s Coon, though, who commands the movie. What we learn of Allison’s backstory tells us that she came from a hardscrabble place. While she enjoys the trappings of her more comfortable pre-England life—she raises horses, teaches riding lessons, has an agreeable suburban home with a Mercedes in the driveway—she’s deeply suspicious of it too. Allison’s journey in the film is her growing distaste for the artifice, her anger and exhaustion at Rory’s furious peddling to maintain something that perhaps never felt fully real to Allison. Coon plays that tragedy, and strange triumph, with a forceful, watchful mettle. She’s breathtaking as she pitches Allison into a slow keen that turns into a howl of defiance. She’s worth the price of admission (or rental, I guess) alone.

Most of this review probably seems to negate what I said up top, which is that The Nest gradually reveals a certain sort of hope. But it’s only from the bleakness described here that Durkin and company can wring the movie’s ultimate conclusion. It’s a simple one, and disarmingly sweet: despite everything, these people still have each other. Sure, they’re ragged, distrusting, hurt. But they still hold a fibrous tether to one another. If you can squint past the ruin, the film is a tribute to that resolve.

None of us should buy into the noxious, absolutist sentiment that people should stick with family no matter what. Plenty of families are harmful, and probably should be disbanded or fled from. But for Allison, Rory, and the children, there is something worth sticking around for. It’s whatever comes after the wrenching and tearing of their little unit’s adolescence, which is given such brilliant illustration in Durkin’s film—one of the best of this year. It’s oddly warming, to see the family still lingering near one another amid the wreckage. They have cobbled together a peculiar kind of a nest, these mud dauber wasps and magpies, picking up the detritus around them and fashioning it into something that will sustain them. For a little while, anyway.

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Jude Law and Carrie Coon Are Gorgeously Dysfunctional in The Nest

The Nest is a horror movie from which the actual horror’s been drained out, leaving behind only the dread and all the ominous trappings. Like the house that serves as its main location — a cavernous old manor in the Surrey countryside with heavy wood paneling and enough space for a family of four to get lost inside it. There’s nothing supernatural about the place, which, as proud patriarch Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) brags to his wife and children when they first arrive, was once rented by Led Zeppelin when they were working on an album. But there doesn’t really need to be for it to scare the shit out of Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell), the younger of the two kids, who seeks sanctuary with his teenage sister Samantha (Oona Roche) at night until she kicks him out, then sprints through the darkened hallways to his room like something’s going to drag him off into the shadows if he’s not fast enough. And then there’s the horse, which belongs to wife and mother Allison (Carrie Coon), a gorgeous black animal who just isn’t the same after he’s transported from New York to the U.K. As the soundtrack swells with audio of his distress, there’s an ominous zoom in on the half-built structure in which he’s stabled, as though he’s a creature possessed.

As a virtuosic movie about the slow implosion of a familial unit, The Nest doesn’t require the help of hauntings or demonic forces — the call, as they say, is coming from inside the house. It’s coming from Rory, mostly, a fast-talking commodities broker with a taste for luxuries he can’t afford. It’s the ’80s, and Rory, who’s been an Englishman abroad for years, uproots his family and moves them back to the London area after he gets what he describes as a job offer too good to turn down. This turns out to be a lie, which we learn alongside Allison, the camera holding on her frozen face at a party as Rory’s boss, Arthur (Michael Culkin), gives a speech about how his former employee called him up and pitched his services. And yet Allison doesn’t confront Rory, having served as co-conspirator and enabler in her husband’s games for a while now. She doesn’t press him about how much the house cost (“Less than you’d think!” he promises) and she plays along when he tells his co-workers that they own a penthouse in New York and are looking to pick up a pied-à-terre in Mayfair. Rory’s been maintaining this facade for so long that he can’t even be honest with himself about it, but the way that Allison hoards and hides cash hints at how many times they’ve flamed out before.

The Nest is the second feature from filmmaker Sean Durkin, who made a splash back in 2011 with Martha Marcy May Marlene , which launched Elizabeth Olsen’s career via what you could call the title role, as a young woman who’s escaped from a cult that still very much maintains a hold on her mind. Durkin didn’t disappear after that debut — he made the glum 2013 miniseries Southcliffe for Channel 4 in the U.K. — but this follow-up’s been long in coming, and it’s impressive enough to make you wonder why. Durkin has a real skill when it comes to using space, turning the family’s gloomy country house into a warren of doorways and hallways boxing the characters in, and framing the glass-walled office through which Rory prowls as though he were on display at a zoo. Shots like the one of the family clustered at one end of the massive Elizabethan table that came with the house, or trying to make their suburban furniture fit the grandiose space, underscore how poorly they fit this lifestyle without saying a word.

While all four of the family members experience their own personal miseries — Benjamin bullied, Samantha bored and rebellious in her choice of friends — it’s around Allison and Rory that the film really revolves. Coon and Law offer a pair of performances that are among the best of the year, Law leaning into the air of artificiality that can accompany his beauty, and Coon allowing her character’s buried rage to bubble up suddenly in ways Allison herself seems to find bewildering. Sitting at a dinner they can’t afford, the couple play a form of chicken with one another, Allison ordering the most expensive items on the menu, and Rory sneering at her taste in wine. They’re perfectly matched in their bruised magnificence, these two people who’ve been drained by years of pretending to be something they’re not, chasing a dream they couldn’t entirely articulate. As a statement on a decade of consumerism, The Nest doesn’t have anything particularly new to say, but as a fable of familial dysfunction, it’s resonant and, yes, frightening, with nary a ghost in sight.

*A version of this article appears in the September 28, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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The Nest review: Jude Law and Carrie Coon tear into this family drama like lions

There are no ghosts in sean durkin’s film, but this is still the story of a woman haunted, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Sean Durkin. Starring: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Charlie Shotwell, Oona Roche, Adeel Akhtar. 15, 107 mins

There are no ghosts to be found in The Nest, but it’s still the story of a woman haunted. At the height of the Eighties, during the flurry of activity that succeeded Thatcher’s deregulation of the financial markets, an expat Brit ( Jude Law ’s Rory O’Hara) moves his family back home from the US in search of opportunity. The children, Ben (Charlie Shotwell) and Sam (Oona Roche), sullenly adjust to their new schools. But it’s Allison ( Carrie Coon ) – the wife at home, unemployed until a new stable can be built for her riding school business – who grows increasingly agitated, interned within the walls of their Jacobean estate, somewhere out in the Surrey countryside.

“You’re all strangers to me right now, all of you,” she spits out at her blank-faced family, all of them mystified by the contorting, land-bound seasickness that seems to be taking over Allison. She’s lost her footing. Now she bristles at everyone and everything like she’s being harassed by unwelcome visitors. Sean Durkin’s film is, ostensibly, a drama, though it plays with the conventions of the horror genre: a door is left open by an unseen hand, while secrets lie waiting in the house’s old, half-rotten beams. Cinematographer Mátyás Erdely – who framed László Nemes’s confrontational, but empathetic long takes of his protagonists in Son of Saul and Sunset – glides the camera down cramped corridors, the corners of each frame gobbled up by shadows.

But the hard truth bearing down on this woman isn’t that the dead have come to curse her, as convenient an explanation as it would be for her feelings of unease. She’s haunted only by the false construct of her life, one she’s spent years trying to push to the back of her mind – this is the fourth time in a decade that her husband’s convinced her to up sticks and abandon any feeling of stability. All the time, she’s simply enabled Rory’s blowhard ways, as he regales colleagues and potential clients with descriptions of his New York loft and his pied-à-terre in Mayfair – in truth, there’s barely enough in the bank to pay the phone bill.

The Nest serves as Durkin’s follow-up to his 2011 debut Martha Marcy May Marlene , which starred Elisabeth Olsen as a cult survivor still bound by delusions and paranoia. Together, these films build a picture of his central obsessions as a writer and director – namely, in finding a way to communicate some ineffable sense of dislocation through cinematic language. But The Nest doesn’t quite have the same thematic punch as his previous film. Its depiction of Rory as a man trapped between American individualism and British determinism (where people must simply “settle for their station”) has little to say about either national characteristic or how they drive corporate greed.

Jude Law, in recent years, has grown more playful with his carved-in-marble looks – he’ll add a gossamer of panic to his usual charms

The Nest does, at least, give Law and Coon free rein to tear into their roles like lions into a fresh kill. Law, in recent years, has grown more playful with his carved-in-marble looks – he’ll add a gossamer of panic to his usual charms, so that some of his more recent characters (such as the music manager he played in Vox Lux ) now play like monarchs realising their empires are starting to slip from their grasp. Coon lets Allison’s internal decay manifest mostly through a micro-shift in expressions – in a swallowed sob, or the aggressive puff of a cigarette. The Nest may be free of the usual phantoms, but here’s a woman in desperate need of some kind of emotional exorcism.

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‘The Nest’: Film Review

'Martha Marcy May Marlene' director Sean Durkin's latest psychological thriller explores the strains a transatlantic move puts on a marriage.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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All work and no play makes Rory O’Hara a dull boy — which is to say, one can scarcely overlook the connections between Sean Durkin ’s subtly unsettling second feature, “ The Nest ,” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” even if this is by far the more tedious of the two movies. While the obsessive dad Jude Law plays here doesn’t fly off the handle quite so spectacularly as Jack Nicholson did, the horror hits closer to home, since what’s haunting the O’Haras isn’t supernatural. Rather, this family’s unraveling, which likewise follows a big move to a spooky new abode, has more to do with all the baggage they’ve brought with them.

Nine years after “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” an unnerving art-house chiller that’s since achieved cult status among cinephiles, Durkin returns to the Sundance Film Festival with a movie that’s considerably more challenging, and arguably more accomplished as well — although paying audiences aren’t likely to appreciate the crystalline intricacy of what he’s trying to achieve here. That’s because “The Nest” is not a traditional genre movie after all, although it may feel like one going in. Those seeking boogie-boogie scares would do well to adjust their expectations. Commercial prospects are iffier than shares in a Norwegian fish farm during a recession, which is a shame, since the meticulously mounted film won’t translate well to the small screen, and feels like a no-go for streaming.

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One day, after at least a decade spent living in the States, English-born Rory announces that he plans to uproot Allison and their two kids, son Ben (Charlie Shotwell) and stepdaughter Sam (Oona Roche), in order to pursue “an opportunity” back in London. Although she sincerely loves her husband, Allison is justified when she tells her mother, “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“It’s not your job to worry,” Mom tells her. “Leave that to your husband.” It’s a telling line, and one that reflects widespread attitudes of the period in which “The Nest” is set. Durkin, who spent time in both England and the U.S. as a child, sets the film in the mid-1980s, when women were expected to “honor” their husbands, and divorce wasn’t nearly so common.

The movie opens with a long shot of a spacious suburban home, with two cars parked in its driveway. The O’Haras are living the dream, the American dream, which Durkin indicates via clues that audiences aren’t necessarily attuned to interpreting. It doesn’t help that perks that seemed like luxuries 35 years ago are now taken for granted. Back then, how many homes had automated espresso machines in their kitchens? (Ours didn’t even have a VCR.) Rory has achieved a level of economic and emotional success that allows the O’Haras to live more comfortably than the vast majority of Americans. But it’s not enough, not for Rory.

He’s found a posh mansion in Surrey, England, which he rents for more than he can afford. Allison’s concern heightens when she sees the place, whereas the kids (oblivious to the family’s finances) are intimidated by the house itself, which could be haunted. The suggestion is a red herring, mind you, although a handful of scenes involving Allison’s horse may leave permanent scars upon your psyche.

Rory works in finance. Complex calculations of risk and reward are his specialty. But in this case, he’s gambling on his family’s comfort and happiness. “I had a sh—y childhood, and I deserve this!” he bellows late in the film. That line, plus a visit to his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in years, reveal an awful lot about his motivations. Rory wants his mom to see his new home, to meet the “beautiful blond American gal” he married, and to show his son the affection that Rory was denied. (He conveniently neglects to mention Sam, who isn’t his biological daughter, and whom he sends to a so-so high school, while paying for Ben to attend the best private academy around.)

When she married Rory, Allison never imagined that her own identity would be so eclipsed by what pop philosopher Alain de Botton dubbed “status anxiety.” His is a seemingly incurable case: The harder Rory tries to prove himself to others, the more dangerous he becomes to his own family. (There’s a reason Allison hides her money from her husband.) Tapping into the dark side of his own allure, Law’s great in the role, although the scenes Durkin uses to dramatize Rory’s downward spiral will drive most folks to boredom. Coon tends to be more captivating: She starts out an unequal partner, but slowly assumes more power as her husband loses control of a situation he created.

Collaborating with Hungarian cinematographer Mátyás Erdély (“Miss Bala,” “Son of Saul”), Durkin maintains a chilly distance from his characters for much of the film. There are exceptions, including a more tightly framed sex scene designed to suggest the connection that, we hope, will carry the couple through the challenges ahead. But most of the time, “The Nest” feels clinical, requiring audiences to put in a level of detective work that even the O’Haras haven’t committed to their own cause.

Movies almost never deal with the intricacies of marriage: finances, schooling, finding the right work-life balance. By contrast, “The Nest” burrows into the minutiae, and the rewards of going along with the O’Haras are worth it, at least for those willing to risk the frustration of a movie that plays by its own rules and doesn’t necessarily believe in happy endings.

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 26, 2020. Running time: 107 MIN.

Production: (U.K.-Canada) A FilmNation Entertainment, BBC Films presentation, with the participation of Telefilm Canada, of an Element Pictures production, in association with Elevation Pictures, Substitute Films. Producers: Amy Jackson, Christina Piovesan. Executive producers: Andrew Lowe, Polly Stokes, Jude Law, Ben Browning, Glen Basner, Alison Cohen, Milan Popelka.
Crew: Director, writer: Sean Durkin. Camera: Mátyás Erdély. Editor: Matthew Hannam. Music: Richard Reed Perry.
With: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Charlie Shotwell, Oona Roche

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“The Nest,” Reviewed: Jude Law Plays a Banker Who Buys Into Money’s Lies

Money talks, but few directors let it speak as clearly and as copiously as Sean Durkin does in his second feature, “The Nest,” which arrives on digital platforms on Tuesday. Durkin is keenly alert to its cold, hard, implacable tones, which run throughout the drama, dominating the action even in between the florid odes to wanting, getting, having, and spending that its human protagonists deftly and passionately deliver. The film is set expressly in the financial world in the mid-nineteen-eighties, in the same milieu as modern classics of the genre such as “Wall Street” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the age of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which unleashed a new age of financial speculation and manipulation.

“The Nest” is set in the U.S. and the U.K., for reasons that Durkin has said are autobiographical. The movie tells a story akin to that of his own childhood—at age eleven, in the early nineties, he moved with his family from England to New York , and the culture shock that he experienced is the spark of the movie. One of the merits of “The Nest” is its shift of the action from the child’s experiences—the boy, in the movie, is named Benjamin (and played by Charlie Shotwell)—to the child’s observations of his parents and, even more (although not explicitly), to what the grownup now understands of what was going on around him and outside his immediate purview at the time.

“The Nest” is the story of a family—Rory and Allison O’Hara (Jude Law and Carrie Coon), the teen-age Samantha (Oona Roche), and the child Benjamin—being torn apart by the furious ambitions and social aspirations of its paterfamilias. At the start of the action, Rory appears to be not-working in finance in New York City: he spends an inordinate amount of time languishing fretfully and frustratedly at home (where the radio talks of President Reagan and his quotas on European chocolates ) and declares to his wife, a horse trainer and equestrian teacher, that he has a good opportunity in London to, as he puts it, head up a new division of a company where he used to work. Allison objects that it would be the family’s fourth move in ten years, but Rory, who’s British, isn’t happy in the U.S. and insists that the money would be too good to pass up.

Leaving for Britain ahead of his family, Rory arranges for them to live in grand style—he rents a huge and ancient house, nearly a castle, in Surrey, that’s on grounds large enough for Allison’s horse to have romping space and a stable, which Rory hires a contractor to build. But when the other three members of the family (and the horse) arrive, the isolated estate seems to spook them all (including the horse). But Rory, swaggering like the lord of the manor, feels his very being swelling to fill the estate’s expanses. He also swaggers through his office, where he’s hailed by his colleagues as the returning prodigal rainmaker. Rory’s ambitious approach to the business, conditioned by his time in the freewheeling environment of Wall Street, marks a shift within the company, Davis Trading, and is appreciated by its aged founder, Arthur Davis (Michael Culkin), and such younger, calmer associates as Steve (Adeel Akhtar), who admits with some embarrassment, when Rory speaks of mighty deals, that he’s working on Norwegian fish farms. (The corporate shift is sparked by the impending deregulation of British financial markets by Margaret Thatcher’s government—the so-called Big Bang of 1986 .)

Both strangely and fascinatingly, “The Nest” is anchored in a half-dozen extended scenes that mark the lines of conflict with dialogue of admirable precision and ferocity, with a cinematic framework to match—yet these scenes set the rest of the drama in their shadows. With vaulting financial vision, Rory pitches Arthur on a scheme to merge the company with—actually, it turns out, to sell the company to—an American firm that’s looking to expand. (It’s a deal that, Rory claims, will make Arthur rich enough to retire—and will make Rory himself rich enough to live his dreams.) Yet there’s trouble in paradise: while Rory is strutting at work and at home, he’s also riotously overspending, as Allison learns when the contractor informs her that he’s stopping work on the stable because Rory’s check has bounced. Allison confronts Rory about it, at a dinner together in a fancy restaurant, and Durkin films the resulting clash about money in a remarkable extended take—filmed to place the couple at an oblique distance—that puts the dialogue itself, the facts and figures, in the foreground as relentlessly as a ledger book embossed on the screen.

For Durkin, the adamant facts of money blast away the lies that surround it, the deceptions of those who covet it overweeningly, the sham of those who treat it as a badge of honor, the foolishness of those who hope to be warmed by its chilly power. In the restaurant scene, which also sets the couple clearly amid other diners whose gaze conveys the threat of embarrassment, Allison shatters not only Rory’s façade of financial success but his façade of marital comity under the sheltering control of his patriarchal largesse. Rory’s financial deceit exposes the fraud of the couple’s relationship, and—with a melodramatic flair that’s as theatrically impressive as it is disconnected from the fabric of the story—Allison takes deft and bold action to show up that fraud in public.

“The Nest” sits at the edge of the private and the public. It displays the social manners of marriage, the expectations of a spouse (in this story, of wives—there are no female executives present in the film) to play the role of support staff at business-related parties and dinners. And it highlights the stories told about family life that lubricate business relations and provide a circular fantasy of happiness at home and success at work which depends on a vast yet rickety ideological framework of laws and mores, norms and assumptions. Yet the mighty societal scope that’s implied in the extended clashes of “The Nest” is unfortunately not within Durkin’s dramatic purview.

Though the political context behind the financial overreaches of the eighties is suggested in the film, it’s dropped in merely as calendar markings. “The Nest” is a political movie that renders its characters resolutely apolitical. The social ideology of the couple’s marriage, the assumptions of who makes the money and who takes on more of the domestic responsibilities, remains untouched throughout. The O’Hara family’s personal history, which the movie depicts as crucial to its arc (no spoilers), is dropped in at opportune moments to inform viewers trickily of what the characters themselves had in the foreground of their minds all along. Beside the movie’s obvious disdain for Rory’s excessive ambition, it offers a favorable vision of modest aspiration, whether in the financial field or in local trades and crafts. Yet it does so with no depth, no inwardness, no sense of the frustrations and the hungers that drive big needs and desires, whether among the rich or the poor; the movie moralizes rather than probes. The family members, though they may be rooted in Durkin’s experiences and memories, remain symbols, abstractions, ciphers; Durkin’s incisive vision of battles over money and disputes over business practices remains stronger than his sense of their intimate, personal, or psychological import. Durkin builds his discerning observations on a dramatic foundation that’s no less unchallenged, and no less rickety, than the social fictions on which it depends.

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‘the nest’: film review | sundance 2020.

Playing a couple whose relationship starts to buckle from the strain of a move to England from New York, Jude Law and Carrie Coon star in 'The Nest,' writer-director Sean Durkin's first feature since 'Martha Marcy May Marlene.'

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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If you didn’t know better, you might almost imagine that The Nest , writer-director Sean Durkin ‘s long awaited follow-up to his debut Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), was inspired by a lost Henry James novel. Although it’s set in the mid-1980s, this story about an Anglo American family fraying at the edges after a transatlantic move is a hyper-nuanced study of marriage mind games, cultural misunderstanding and stifling gender expectations.

A beautifully modulated chamber piece, played by a crack ensemble led by Jude Law as a flashy Cockney on the make and Carrie Coon as his increasingly disillusioned American wife (think Portrait of a Lady ‘s Isabel Archer, but chain-smoking and wild in the sack), The Nest lingers long after the final credits. It may not have the same surprising newness that juiced the debut of Martha Marcy , but it casts an ineffable spell nevertheless.

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The Nest Review

27 Aug 2021

Nine years after (literal) cult thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene , writer-director Sean Durkin returns with an equally challenging if completely different story. A neatly wrought chamber piece, The Nest is Marriage Story meets Escape To The Chateau , a piercing portrait of the breakdown of a relationship within the rooms and corridors of a huge manor house. Graced by perfectly modulated performances by Jude Law and, especially, The Leftovers ’ Carrie Coon , it’s a film that eschews conventional storytelling in favour of a sophisticated, more elliptical approach that skewers subjects as diverse as male ego, class and the best way to get rid of a dead horse. It certainly requires patience, but offers bountiful rewards.

The Nest is set in the mid-’80s but opens like a ’90s thriller, with a wealthy family living in a huge American house, two cars in the garage, an espresso machine, the whole bit (a string score by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry underscores danger). It looks like the model family: English dad Rory O’Hara (Law), American mom Allison (Coon), ten-year-old son Ben (Charlie Shotwell) and Rory’s teen step-daughter Sam (Oona Roche). For all the moneyed good taste, Durkin infuses it with unease that belies the ideal of a happy unit. When Rory announces the family are upping sticks to England, the film finds another means to amplify the relationship cracks: a massive, slightly run-down country manor in Surrey that Rory proudly announces played home to Led Zeppelin recording an album. They might as well be living in The Overlook Hotel.

Carrie Coon is The Nest's MVP.

If you are looking for conventional storytelling with plot beats and turning points, then The Nest is not for you. Instead, Durkin, who flitted between the US and England as a child, accumulates a number of domestic vignettes that slowly build into a gripping portrait of a marriage in crisis. As it goes on, each scene becomes more compelling than the last: a dinner in which Allison calls Rory out for bullshitting about how good Anthony Hopkins is at the National Theatre; Rory visiting his mum (Anne Reid) on  a council estate, or being schooled in life lessons by a mini-cab driver (James Nelson-Joyce).

Tapping into the darker edges of his persona, Law is terrific as Rory, a man from a shitty background who has pulled himself up so far he only operates on a higher level of bullshit. But it is Coon who is The Nest ’s MVP. In her skilful hands, the initially disillusioned Allison grows in stature, becoming the dominant force in the relationship as the movie goes on — watching Coon swig wine straight from the bottle in a posh restaurant (“You’re embarrassing”, “And you’re exhausting”), let loose in a nightclub to The Communards’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ or losing her shit in a last-act meltdown is electrifying. But sometimes it’s just a close-up of her face, with the life ebbing away, that hits hardest. A masterclass.

Movies | 11 10 2023

Movies | 03 09 2021

‘The Nest’ Review: Screams From a Marriage

By David Fear

There’s a scene near the end of The Nest, Sean Durkin’s follow-up (finally) to 2011’s Marcy Martha May Marlene, in which Carrie Coon dances. She has been suffering through a business dinner in which her husband, a British commodities trader named Rory ( Jude Law ), is preening on about London’s theater scene to impress some clients: Anthony Hopkins is going to be at the National Theatre, they simply must go see him, he’ll get them tickets. His wife — her name is Allison — snort-laughs and calls his bluff. She excuses herself to go to the powder room. Then Allison slips out of the posh restaurant and wanders into a nightclub down the street. She downs a vodka tonic. Then she downs another. Suddenly we cut to her on the dance floor, the Communards’ cover of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” blaring out of the speakers, and Allison is lost in her own private, violent reverie, moving way too intensely to the beat. She’s throwing her hands up, running in place, strutting in circles, closing her eyes and tiling her head back. A few folks next to her move out of her way. The woman has claimed this space for her own.

The whole thing lasts for less than a minute, though it’s one of those sequences — which, like a lot of things in Durkin’s sophomore movie, feels narratively elliptical yet somehow essential to the overall mood — that sticks with you. Partially because it reminds you what an uninhibited physical performer The Leftovers star is, as she turns this sloshed disco boogie into her own personal Martha Graham tribute, and partially because it feels as instantly memorable as it is meme-worthy. (We can now retire “Dance like no one’s watching” for “Dance like you’re a contempt-filled Carrie Coon.”) But mostly because, for the preceding 90 minutes or so, we’ve been waiting for her to let loose. As one half of a couple on the brink of implosion, Coon has silently death-stared, shouted, snarled, snarked and snapped at Law, who gives as much as he gets. But she hasn’t really had the chance to explode, so when she starts swaying back and forth in the club like she’s caught in a storm, it’s the moment of catharsis she — and we — desperately need. The Nest is one long, edge-of-excruciating exercise in domestic tension. Welcome to its one brief, belated moment of release. (The movie opens in theaters this weekend, and on VOD starting November 17th. See it with someone you loathe.)

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Set right in the middle of Reagan’s second term and well into the go-go 1980s, this curdled tale of upward mobility run amuck, and eventually run aground, begins in one of the tonier suburbs of upstate New York. An ex-pat who’s chased and caught the American Dream, Rory is living the life of Riley. Their house is a tasteful tribute to wealth. There are two cars in their garage and — remember, this is the mid-’80s — an espresso machine in their kitchen. Allison has a lucrative business training horses and offering riding lessons. Her daughter Samantha (Oona Roche), from a previous marriage, is a gymnast. The couple’s 10-year-old son, Ben (Charlie Shotwell), likes to play soccer with Dad out back by their pool, even when his father cheats in scoring goals. Everything seems perfect. So o f course Rory announces that they have to move.

Even though, per Allison, this would be the fourth time they’ve uprooted themselves in the past decade, Rory says he’s got an opportunity back in London with his old firm that’s too good to pass up. He wants to follow the money there before it runs out here. That’s the idea, at least. Once the family arrives in the U.K., they discover Dad has bought them a massive country estate in Surrey. It’s a dark, drafty and forbidding, this new place … but on the plus side, Led Zeppelin once stayed here and recorded an album! Rory’s also bought everyone extravagant gifts, started constructing a personal stable for Allison on the property (along with what could be the single most symbolic horse ever committed to 35mm celluloid) and insists on picking up the bill during expensive lunches. “In America, everybody believes they can be anything,” he tells his colleagues. “Here, you have to settle for the station you’re born into.” That may be a hint as to why Rory really wanted to come back; maybe it’s an “opportunity” to prove that he’s of a higher class than people thought. Meanwhile, his family is not adjusting well to the new surroundings. In fact, they all seem to be falling apart ….

In interviews around The Nest ‘s premiere at Sundance earlier this year, Durkin mentioned that he’d moved between the U.S. and England as a kid, and he was interested in exploring the differences between the countries. And while it’s easy to imagine that he added autobiographical elements to one or both of the dislocated kids here — Samantha acts out by sneaking cigs and throwing a party in their cavernous digs; a bullied Ben retreats into sullen silence — whatever interest the film has in geographical or cultural differences ended up taking a backseat. All the better, my dears, to let you have a ringside seat for the combatants at the center of the story. Law has always been great at weaponizing his golden-boy looks and charm in everything from The Talented Mr. Ripley to The Young/New Pope, and you can see how his continental bluster probably lubed his success in America but no longer cuts the mustard back home. As for Coon, she of the immaculate slowly crumbling facial expressions — some of the film’s best shots involve the actor just letting the life slowly drain of her eyes and half-smile — her Allison is smart enough to stash money yet steely enough to not back down from a fight. And more than sex and lying to each other, fighting is what these two do best. “You’re embarrassing,” he says to her, right before she tastes a fine wine they can’t afford by grabbing it from the waiter and glugging from the bottle. “And you’re exhausting,” she replies. This is just the undercard bout.

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Law and Coon aren’t the only reason to see Durkin’s marital nightmare of a movie, but they are the main reason to see it, and both of them give these characters so much shared history communicated without saying a word. (Ditto the ways they spit cruel words to each other.) And along with this cutting, jabbing couple and their lost-and-delirious kids, there is also the fifth character of the nest itself. Durkin is part of a generation of filmmakers clearly weaned on Stanley Kubrick, and part of an even smaller subset who feel free to borrow bits of his technique without necessarily imitating him outright. There are enough slow zooms, creeping shots and people tellingly framed in doorways and hallways courtesy of cinematographer Mátyás Erdély ( Son of Saul, Sunset ) to bring to mind another massive domicile that caused an ambitious man and a long-suffering woman to lose their minds. In terms of form and content, you could easily describe the writer-director’s dispatch from yesteryear’s class struggle as The Shining meets Scenes From a Marriage. Some clever folks have even referred to The Nest as a haunted house movie, which is somewhat correct — it’s just not the house that’s doing the haunting. These occupants have always been the caretakers of their own battered, if not beyond repair union. When the movie ends not with a bang but a plate of toast, it’s the second time after Coon’s shiimy-shimmy-shake in which that sigh of relief you hear is your own.

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Review by Brian Eggert November 22, 2020

In the most fulfilling way, The Nest is a drama without an obvious hook. It doesn’t depend on a catchy device or an over-emphasized theme to give it purpose; rather, it relies on well-constructed characters and the inherent drama of family dynamics. Writer-director Sean Durkin, whose debut Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011 had such a hook with its account of cult brainwashing, considers what happens to a family when their circumstances change for the worse. But Durkin’s second feature film has an atmosphere of interpersonal drama not easily distilled into a logline that does its characters justice. The film revolves around complicated people who often behave in ways that betray their image of themselves. They’re played by actors capable of integrating the many facets of their roles, performed with fascinating details and deviations, into full-fledged human beings. Durkin carefully avoids telegraphing a lesson to his audience in his screenplay for The Nest , concentrating instead on behavior that represents a sublime mix of acid and affection.

Jude Law and Carrie Coon star as a married couple worthy of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, though Durkins’ aesthetic proves far more mannered than Cassavetes. Set in the late-1980s in the midst of Reaganism, the film follows Rory (Law), an investment broker who lives in upstate New York with his wife, Allison (Coon), who trains horses for a living. They own fine things of the period, including a cordless phone, an espresso maker, and other signs of a privileged life. They seem so wrapped up in their routines and acquisition of objects that the distance between them almost goes unnoticed. Their children, the teenage Sam (Oona Roche), Allison’s daughter from another relationship, and their adolescent son Ben (Charlie Shotwell), get along with playfully mocking jabs made with apparent sibling warmth underneath. On the surface, the family has charmed interactions filled with good humor (the way they share sandwiches is particularly endearing). And yet, The Nest opens with an agitated sequence with Rory, the motivations of which will remain unclear until a devastating moment.

Feeling sour about his life in the United States, Rory wants to move back to London, where he’s convinced he can advance their fortune at his old firm under his former mentor (Michael Culkin). Reluctantly, the family joins him at a massive estate on the English countryside with seventeenth-century floors and Elizabethan furniture. Rory has paid a year’s rent in advance, purchased a chinchilla coat for Allison to soften the blow, and arranged for his son to be in the best school around. But the move is like cutting stitches before the wound can heal; soon, everything opens and begins to rot. Sam changes sharply, transitioning into a rebellious phase that isolates her brother. Ben retreats inward, wetting the bed and getting into trouble at school. Allison plans to build a stable on the estate’s property, but the horse Rory purchased for her behaves strangely, and the workers hired to build the structure stop showing up because Rory’s checks have bounced. Their bank account has run dry, depleted by Rory to appear prosperous. However, this practical problem accentuates their relationship’s deeper issues.

It’s tempting and not altogether off-base to read The Nest as an indictment of American capitalism and its potentially destructive “you can be anything” attitude as a gateway to success addiction. Rory, who comes from the classist British culture that considers your lineage before your talent, resents his modest roots and used the so-called Land of Opportunity to make a small fortune thanks to deregulation and ruthless, Gordon Gekko-style brokering (“I had a million dollars once,” he moans later). But upon returning to London, he discovers that pushy deals and bombastic brags don’t have the same effect. In one of his best performances, Law plays these scenes brilliantly; it’s as though we see the 1980s version of Brad Strand, his character from I Heart Huckabees (2004), before he discovers his soul. Strand repeatedly tells a story about Shania Twain and a chicken salad sandwich to impress his business connections. Rory tells all manner of tall tales about his family’s penthouse in New York or seeing stage productions at the National Theatre in London, but his clients aren’t impressed. His desperate need to project success is matched by his hostility when Allison confronts his pretenses in a cruel dinner scene. “You’re embarrassing,” he tells her. “You’re exhausting,” she replies.

The sheer talent on display by The Nest ’s two leads cannot be overstated. Law excels at playing charismatic, morally bankrupt characters, from Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) to his roles in Sleuth (2007), Contagion (2011), and other theatrical roles. He makes Rory despicable yet not undeserving of our empathy. Rory may be saddled with a drive that betrays him, but he’s a tragic figure. Law’s bright, sad eyes remind us that he’s not a monster. Coon, best known from HBO’s The Leftovers and the third season of FX’s Fargo , gives a powerhouse performance in her balance of Allison’s fierce independence and her refusal to admit how much she savors the finer things. In one scene, she reels over the loss of her horse to an unsympathetic Rory. “He was a living, breathing animal, and he died,” she cries, neatly compartmentalizing the 150 or so chinchillas it took to make the coat she initially wears, before it becomes a symbol of Rory’s desire to appear cultured. With masterful body language and expression, Coon shows us that, in her way, Allison remains just as obsessed with appearances and dismissive of the problems in her marriage as Rory. “Everything’s good,” she insists to her children, who know everything’s going wrong. Neither Rory nor Allison can see their destructive codependence, and the actors render this with perfect clarity.

We learn early in the film that relocating to London marks their fourth move in a decade. The pattern repeats itself, even though the events in The Nest seem to bring the couple to an impasse. It’s unclear whether these events represent yet another lap around the same track in the larger race of their lives together or if this story remains an isolated and intensified climax after which nothing will be the same. Durkin’s screenplay is deliciously ambiguous about this, leaving much up to the viewer to decide. “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down,” explains Rory. The film opens as Rory finds himself unsatisfied with merely being “up” and nagged by a desire to be on top. He’s blind to everything else. Later, during a cab ride after a disastrous business dinner, Rory laments his situation to the driver, arguing that at least he’s “the best” father. “I keep a roof over their head, I give them the best of everything, and I’ve never laid a hand on them,” he explains. The driver responds, “That’s the bare minimum, mate. Don’t pat yourself on the back for that.”

By the end, Durkin finds a kind of acceptance for his characters, just as his viewers must accept that The Nest isn’t a closed book of a film. He doesn’t offer a traditionally satisfying conclusion or happily-ever-after answer to what the previous 107 minutes of screen time mean. It’s unclear whether the slowly building volatile events we’ve just witnessed will result in a divorce, supply the family with a catalyst to change, or will represent the latest “down” in their ongoing saga of ups and downs. Though the parents and their children appear settled in the last shot, we cannot help but ponder about what will happen next. Durkin has thoroughly implanted these characters in our minds, giving them a place to live and breathe long after the film is over. We’re left thinking about the intricate performances and how the many dark corners of their home, beautifully captured on camera, reflect each family member. Told with the economy and tightly wound drama of a chilly, theatrical style, The Nest is the sort of film that burrows in the mind, demanding that the viewer invest themselves in a challenging but rewarding excavation.

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Expert direction overcomes shallowness of mature drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

It may not be the most relatable problem, but movi

No clearly positive role models. Allison seems to

Character shoots an injured horse (off-screen). Li

Passionate sex between married couple includes bar

Strong language includes uses of "f--k," "s--t," "

Teens drink and smoke at a party, some to point of

Positive Messages

It may not be the most relatable problem, but movie deals with how it feels to have once had power, status, wealth and then lose them. Loss and pain lead to obsession here, but in the end, family seems to prevail. Communication and truth-telling become important themes.

Positive Role Models

No clearly positive role models. Allison seems to be the one working hardest to hold the family together, but even she comes unglued in several scenes, acts irrationally.

Violence & Scariness

Character shoots an injured horse (off-screen). Limp, dead horse dropped into grave by tractor. Horse later dug up. Mention of being bullied.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Passionate sex between married couple includes bare breasts, moaning, thrusting, climaxing. Bare breasts seen more than once. Kissing. Man without shirt on.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bulls--t," "c--t," "bastard," "son of a bitch," "damn," "shut up," plus "oh my God" and "Jesus f--king Christ."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teens drink and smoke at a party, some to point of vomiting. Teens discuss buying speed. Additional teen smoking; mom finds hidden cigarette butts in teen's room. A main adult character smokes regularly. Social drinking (wine). Characters drink in a bar and on a train.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Nest is a 1980s-set drama about a businessman who's desperately trying to land a big deal to keep his family's privileged status intact. There's a fairly explicit sex scene between a married couple: A woman is shown topless (in more than one scene), and there's thrusting, moaning, and climaxing. Characters kiss, and a man is shown shirtless. An injured horse is shot off-screen, and there's a burial (the horses's limp body is dropped into a grave from a tractor); the horse is later dug up. Bullying is mentioned. Strong language includes "f--k," "s--t," "c--t," and more. Teens throw a huge party, where some smoke and drink to excess (vomiting, passing out, etc.). Teens also talk about buying speed, and a teen hides cigarette butts from her mother (who finds them). Adults smoke cigarettes and drink socially. The plot isn't very dynamic, but director Sean Durkin ( Martha Marcy May Marlene ) gives the material a nuanced, poetic touch, and it works. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 2 parent reviews

The Nest – Maybe Needed Better Construction

What's the story.

In THE NEST, it's the 1980s, and entrepreneur/stock trader Rory ( Jude Law ) suddenly announces to his riding teacher wife, Allison ( Carrie Coon ), that they should pack up their two kids, leave their New York home, and move to London, where Rory grew up. He thinks that opportunity there is ripe for the taking. So he sets them up in an enormous old mansion and goes back to his old job, trying to convince his boss (Michael Culkin) to sell the firm for huge profits. Meanwhile, Allison's horse arrives from the United States, but he's sick and soon must be put down. Teen daughter Samantha (Oona Roche) falls in with some reckless kids and starts partying, drinking, and smoking, while younger son Benjamin ( Charlie Shotwell ) gets into trouble at school. Things really start to unravel as bills go unpaid and nerves are frayed.

Is It Any Good?

A shallow story about shallowness, this drama still gets fairly gripping thanks to its director's immense skill for composition and performance, as well as dashes of patience and sensitivity. The follow-up to director Sean Durkin 's powerful, highly acclaimed feature debut Martha Marcy May Marlene , from 2011, The Nest may somewhat resemble movies about unchecked greed and the obsessive search for status ( Wall Street , The Wolf of Wall Street , etc.), but it doesn't include the flashy, intoxicating excitement of those films. Rather it exposes the behavior for what it is: destructive and ruinous. Law gives a great performance; in one of the best scenes, he sums up Rory's obsession with the line, "I had a million dollars once ..."

Coon's Allison eventually becomes the movie's heart, her cool facade crumbling and reflecting the fate of her poor horse. Hers is another fantastic performance, and it's equalled by the two children. Durkin frames all of them in the enormous house, using cavernous spaces, secret doors, unknown corners, and dizzying high spaces to illustrate their heartbreaking disconnect. Ultimately, The Nest may cause a "that's it?" reaction in many viewers, but Durkin's unhurried, poetic examination of the characters' sadnesses and heartbreaks gracefully overcomes any general lack of plot.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how The Nest depicts drinking, drug use, and smoking . Do the adults serve as positive role models for the kids? Is teen drinking glamorized? Are consequences shown? Why does that matter?

How is sex depicted? Is it used to deepen or underline the characters' relationship? What values are imparted?

Do you think it was necessary for the movie to show the dead horse? Is this an important image for the story or for the character? How would the movie be different without it?

Have you ever had a measure of power, status, or wealth, and lost it? How did it feel?

What role does bullying play in the story?

Movie Details

In theaters : September 18, 2020
On DVD or streaming : November 17, 2020
Cast : Jude Law , Carrie Coon , Oona Roche
Director : Sean Durkin
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : IFC Films
Genre : Drama
Run time : 107 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and teen partying
Last updated : May 11, 2024

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‘The Nest’ Ending Explained: What Does the Horse Scene Mean?

Where to stream:.

The Nest (2020)

The psychological drama The Nest may have come out in 2020, but many viewers are watching the movie for the first time in 2024 now that The Nest is streaming on Netflix. And hoo boy, are those viewers in for a tense watch.

Written and directed by Sean Durkin ( Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Iron Claw ), The Nest stars Jude Law and Carrie Coon as a 1980s husband and wife whose lives quickly unravel, thanks to a series of bad business decisions on the part of the husband. This is a movie that will make modern women grateful that it’s at least slightly more socially acceptable to not depend on a man for financial stability.

Despite the film’s title, The Nest is anything but cozy. This is a dreary, tension-filled movie rife with symbolism and metaphors. If you got lost along the way, don’t worry—Decider is here to help. Read on for a complete analysis of The Nest plot summary and The Nest ending explained, including what happened to the horse in The Nest .

The Nest plot summary:

British Rory (Jude Law) and American Allison O’Hara (Carrie Coon) are living a comfortable, upper-middle-class life in New York with their pre-teen son Ben (Charlie Shotwell) and Allison’s teenage daughter Sam (Oona Roche) in the 1980s. They seem happy and settled. Allison makes a living by teaching horse riding lessons and renting out her barn.

But one day, Rory announces to his wife that they need to move to London. He insists he’s been offered a business opportunity that he can’t refuse, working for his old boss, Arthur Davis (Michael Culkin), at a stock trading company. Allison doesn’t want to move, but Rory doesn’t give her a choice. He believes the Reagan-era trend of de-regulation is coming to England, and that he has an opportunity to be filthy rich. He buys a giant old mansion in the country side and moves his family into a home that is far too large for them.

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Allison’s beloved horse, Richmond, is distressed as he is packed up to be shipped—mirroring Allison’s own repressed distress over her life being upended. It’s best if you know right now that the horse is a metaphor for Allison—for her freedom, comfort, and sense of belonging. (Horse lovers may want to skip this film!)

Rory is warmly welcomed back to his home country by his old boss and former friends. Allison attends a posh work party with her husbands, where she learns that he lied to her: He called his boss and asked for a job in England, not the other way around. Later, Allison is having trouble with Richmond, who is still very distressed. The poor horse also has nowhere warm to hang out, because construction on the new barn that contractors have been building on the property is stalled. Allison calls the workers to find out why, and learns that the checks written by Rory have been bouncing. She checks their bank account, and realizes they are basically broke. When she confronts Rory, he swears that a “big check” in “ten days or less.” He believe he has sold his boss on the idea of selling the company, and he will get a big paycheck from the deal.

Weeks pass, and the big check doesn’t come. One morning, Rory asks Allison to borrow money to hold him over. She initially refuses, but eventually does give him some cash—but she makes him step out of the room before she gets it, so that he can’t see where she keeps her emergency funds stored. That day, while riding on Richmond, Allison’s horse collapses and has a seizure. Rory doesn’t pick up when she calls, so she runs down the road to ask a farmer for help. The farmer apparently determines that the horse will die, and shoots Richmond to put him out of his misery. The farmer helps Allison bury her horse on the property. Again, think metaphorically: Allison is attempting to bury and repress her misery.

Meanwhile, Rory’s boss tells him that he won’t be selling the company after all. Rory’s deal is dead, and he won’t be getting that extra money. He steals his coworker’s idea and pitches it as his own. Desperate, Rory goes to visit his mother out in the country. It’s revealed he comes from a working-class background, and that he hasn’t spoken to his mother in over a decade. She doesn’t even know that he’s married, or that she has a grandson. Rory tries to convince his mother to come move into the giant mansion with them, but she declines.

Back at home, Allison locks all the doors the house, only to have one seemingly re-open on its own. Spooky. When Rory finally comes home, he and Allison have a huge blowout fight. Rory offers no sympathy for the loss of Richmond—only anger that he was sold a “faulty” horse. He blames Allison for not consulting a vet before burying the horse, saying he could have sued. Allison fires back that something probably happened to the horse during the move, or that the “poisonous house” is to blame. She lays into Rory that the house and the move have been horrible for the family, that Rory is overspending, and he’s delusional about how much money they have. He screams back that he had a “shitty childhood” and deserves the upper-class life he’s pretending to have.

Allison takes a job as a farmhand, working for that helpful farmer, to pick up extra cash. Rory invites Allison to a work dinner, where he will pitch people on some vague business-related deal. At dinner, Allison crassly reveals she works as a farmhand “shoveling shit,” and mocks Rory for claiming he’s been to the theater in front of the work colleagues. Then she leaves him at the restaurant, takes the car, and drives herself to a bar. After a night of dancing and drinking, she tries to drive home, but realizes she is too drunk to be driving. She pulls over. When she wakes up, she see Richmond in front of the car. She blinks, and he’s gone, indicating she was just imagining the horse.

Rory tries to get his coworker to come out and drink with him, but the coworker declines. He reveals that the work deal will be done without Rory, because the business people weren’t impressed by Rory’s bullshit. Rory takes a cab home and confesses to the driver that he “pretends to be rich” for a living. He reveals that once upon a time, he had a million dollars in the bank, back in New York. But he got greedy, tried to live above his means, and now he’s broke. He also reveals his father hit him as a child. The driver responds that all he can do is be a better father to his children than his father was to him, and that if he finds work and takes care of his family, he will be alright. But Rory doesn’t want to hear it. The driver, realizing that Rory won’t be able to pay the far, kicks him out of the car.

Back at the mansion, Sam has trashed the place by throwing a huge party. Ben has spent the night scared and hiding, because he came across the body of the horse on the grounds, which had somehow come unburied.

What happened to the horse in The Nest ?

We don’t get a definitive reason for why the horse died, but we know he was in distress since the move. Allison tells her son that she believes the horse was sick and she didn’t notice. Again, think of the horse as a metaphor for Allison herself—she was ignoring her own needs and her own freedom in favor as Rory. As a result, some part of herself died. She was sick, and she didn’t notice until it was too late—until her comfortable life had been ruined. You could also see the horse as a metaphor for their marriage. There was always something wrong beneath the surface, but it took moving to bring the problems to the surface. Eventually, it died. But even then, those problems couldn’t stay buried.

The Nest horse scene explained:

When Allison gets home, Ben shows her the body of Richmond. The horse’s body has become partially unburied, presumably because the hole wasn’t deep enough. Allison tried to repress all this misery and suffering, but it came bubbling back up. She can’t ignore it. Distraught, Allison breaks down crying over the horse. She tries to dig Richmond out of the ground with her bare hands. She is desperate to get back to the time in her life before Richmond—and everything he represents—died. But unfortunately, there is no going back. Allison and her family can only move forward.

The Nest ending explained:

In the final scene of The Nest, Rory returns home and finds his family eating breakfast in the dining room. He attempts to act like nothing is wrong, and pitches the idea of moving into the city, where he swears there will be opportunity to make money by starting his own company. Allison wearily tells her husband to “stop.” Rory begins to cry, and apologizes. (Presumably for ruining his family’s life with his delusions!) Sam then gets up and gives her step-father a hug. She pulls a chair up to the table, and offers him breakfast. And with that, the movie ends.

Writer/director Sean Durkin doesn’t spell out what is next for the family. But I like to think that Rory will take that cab driver’s advice and focus on taking care of his children. And hopefully Allison dumps his ass, moves back to America, gets a new horse, and actually takes care of it—and herself—this time.

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The Nest Ending, Explained: What Happens To Rory?

Sean Durkin’s ‘ The Nest’ (2020) perfectly encapsulates its relatively mundane narrative in an eerie blanket through a pressure cooker of intense emotions and spirals, rendering the film a Gothic psychological thriller. Following Rory O’Hara, a man with big desires who likes to take big risks in the former’s service, moves his family— wife Allison, their son Ben, and his step-daughter Sam— from America to England. In the English countryside, Rory settles his family in a massive country manor with plenty of space to spare.

However, the man’s enormous dreams come tumbling down when his best-made plans fail, sending Rory down a financial crisis that translates into ugly strain within his family. Although the film charts a pretty simplistic storyline, complex symbolism paired with subliminal tension persists throughout the plot. Thus, by the time the different elements have paid off within their capacity in the end, viewers might be left with a few questions about the film’s overall meaning. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Nest Plot Synopsis

Rory O’Hara lives in New York in an impressive house with his wife, Allison, who works as a horseback riding instructor. He has two kids: Ben, his biological tween son with Allison, and Sam, his moody teenage stepdaughter. The O’Hara’s lead a happy life— only Rory can feel the constant itch of something missing. Therefore, the man gives in to his restlessness and calls up an old business associate, Arthur Davis, with a proposition to compel him to hire Rory in his firm.

However, Rory embellishes the story and spins it as Davis reaches out to him when regaling the incident to Allison in an effort to convince her to move their family to England. The woman, all too familiar with her husband’s ambitions and dissatisfaction with an average life, is reluctant to greenlight the move. Nevertheless, Rory’s insistence leaves his wife with no other choice.

As such, the O’Hara family packs up their possessions, Allison says goodbye to her horses, and they all move to England. Rory, who arrived earlier to make accommodations for his family, welcomes Allison and the kids to the grand mansion he has bought for them. As it would turn out, the entirely too-big-for-four mansion isn’t the only luxury Rory has indulged in, which he proves by enrolling Ben in the best school in town alongside buying Allison a car and a horse, Richmond.

Furthermore, Rory also promises to build stables for Allison so that she can continue her horse grooming and training passion without working under someone else. Meanwhile, Rory continues to work for Arthur Davis as a banker, always on the lookout for opportunities, risk, and profits. However, the man has a tendency to feign wealth around others, often lying about his family’s financial situation and background to brag about a better life. Even though Allison notices the same, she never says anything.

Nonetheless, the O’Haras can’t escape from the reality of their situation, wherein Rory’s whims have left Allison out of a job, and their family funds almost drained on his insistence on luxury. Soon, the consequences of Rory’s whirlwind move and everything that followed sneak up on the family. Yet, Rory attempts to keep everything hidden from Allison. Worse yet, he attempts to double down on his fake life of luxury by planning for a future move into a better, modern house.

As a result, Allison finally confronts Rory head-on about their dwindling family funds. Nonetheless, Rory insists that he has a big paycheque coming in due to a significant project at work. The entire reason Rory moved to England was because he wanted to get back into banking. However, his pitch of selling Davis’ company to an American firm in anticipation of market trends was moving glacially.

Thus, stuck in a financial rut, the O’Haras’ situation worsened and spiraled out of control due to their unwillingness to name the issue, especially with their kids, Sam and Ben. As such, things come crashing down after Richmond’s health declines rapidly one day, pushing the horse to the edge. Consequently, Allison, alone at home, has to get help from a nearby farmer, who shoots Richmond to put him out of his misery. Yet, the devastating news only incites annoyance in Rory, who only cares about the money he lost on a faulty horse.

The Nest Ending: Does Rory Lose His Job?

Rory’s job remains the center of the film’s conflict and narrative. Nevertheless, as much significance as Rory’s job has in the story, the viewers are told just as little about it. He’s a banker, and his job is to make investments, predict market trends, and make a profit for his company. Or rather, Davis’ company. Therein lies the crux of Rory’s character. Even though he uproots his family from their regular lives to a new reality over his job, it isn’t actually the most important thing to him.

Instead, the most important thing to Rory is wealth. The man yearns to be as rich as the men he works with, but mostly the man he works for. He wants to open his own company and make his own bets to bring fortune into his own life. Although the same is a fairly commonplace desire, Rory commits himself to it to an almost hubristic degree. He wants to be a part of the upper echelons of society so badly that he takes incredible risks to be able to afford it.

For instance, the house Rory picks, while gothic in its eeriness, is grand enough to be impressive. He sends his son, Ben, to the best school in town so he can tell others about it, but his stepdaughter goes to a regular school. In some ways, the same captures Rory’s character perfectly. He puts on an impressive show, with talks about operas and New York penthouses, all the while having only 600 pounds to his name.

In the end, Rory’s business venture ends up being more the same. Even though the man has good instincts and an eye for profit, the company he works for isn’t his. Therefore, although Davis humors his idea at first, he eventually lets him know he has no idea to follow through with it. Davis intends to keep hold of his company and won’t sell it out at the first sign of trouble in the market.

The revelation hits Rory hard since he has everything riding on this deal. Still, after a few curt words from Davis in response to his rude outburst, the man can do nothing but comply. Thus, in an effort to save his dying career, Rory steals his co-worker Steve’s idea of investing in Norwegian Fishing Farms. As such, he and Steve attend a vital casual dinner with their potential clients in a fancy English restaurant. However, Rory’s fake persona pushes Allison to the edge at the table, who ends up snapping a few times, unable to hear her husband lie about a lavish life they’ve never had.

After Allison ditches the dinner in favor of a drunken night out, Rory learns that she isn’t the only one dissatisfied with his larger-than-life persona. Even the Norwegian clients could see the desperation hiding behind his facade. As a result, they decide to do business with only Steve, leaving Rory out of it. Consequently, Rory’s last attempt at profit slips away from his fingers, breaking him under the weight of his unrealistic greed. Without the deal, Rory’s position at Davis’ company is precarious. Worse yet, his own displeasure with the incompetency will likely make him leave the job before Davis can fire him.

On the lonely cab ride home, Rory resorts to his situation, admitting to the cab driver that he only plays at being a rich man because he’s desperate to have something bigger in his life. As such, the truth begins to come out that Rory has condemned himself and his family in pursuit of his own unrelenting desires. Rory had a million dollars in his bank once, back in New York, but he wasn’t happy then, and he hasn’t been happy since it went away, either. The man is stuck in a perpetual cycle of wanting more.

What Happens to Rory’s Family?

Rory’s family takes the brunt of his dysfunctionality. In their parents’ absence, Sam hosts a wild party to fit in with the local teenagers her age, while Sam is left alone, unable to discuss his problems with anyone. Even after the boy accidentally stumbles across Richmond’s dead husk, peeking out of its hastily dug grave, he can only hide himself in a secret room.

By the time Allison returns home, well after daybreak, the house is a mess, and so are her kids. Yet, once she glimpses at Richmond’s grave, her own mental breakdown takes precedence, leaving the kids to fend for their own breakfast. In the end, Rory finally returns home after walking the entire way. When he greets his family, they are in a bleak scene, held together with breakfast in the dining room.

Rory attempts to return to his false grandeur, bringing up his plans to move to a flat in London. Yet, this time, Allison compels him to stop with only a few words. Considering Allison had been weary of the move from the start and had the presence of mind to keep cash stowed in a secret box before arriving in England, we can conclude that the woman predicted such an outcome.

Despite their differences, Allison knows Rory just as she knows how poisonous his ambition is for the family. Similarly, Sam and Ben are likely no strangers to their father’s reality either. Still, no matter where Rory’s desires or Allison’s breakdowns leave their family, they manage to come together again. Therefore, after their recent catastrophe, the O’Haras sit together for breakfast, even if the air is thick with tension. Rory has lost everything, and Allison has been drained of her patience and a stable life. Thus, the only thing they have left is their family.

Movie Review: The Nest (2020)

Dan Franzen
Movie Reviews
--> September 16, 2020

Jude Law (“ Captain Marvel ”) plays an “entrepreneur” who moves his American family back to his home country of England so he can work for his old company in, The Nest , a deathly slog of a movie directed by Sean Durkin. This movie is so slow moving it practically runs in reverse, with an almost phobic treatment of such oddities as an ambulatory plot and interesting characters. In short, it’s really a waste of time for any viewer, even fans of Law or costar Carrie Coon (“ Gone Girl ”) or of director Durkin, whose sole previous film “ Martha Marcy May Marlene ” was much better at holding interest over a 100-minute time span.

Law is Rory O’Hara (pronounced “Oh-HA-rah”), and as with many Law characters Rory is a bit of a caddish jerk. Now, people in the world of high finance tend to be Type A personalities after the almighty dollar, and it feels like Law can play that sort of character in his sleep. Which is more or less what happens here. His portrayal of Rory doesn’t lack for conviction, at least — the viewer is easily persuaded that Mister Law is indeed the rapscallion he plays in this movie. Coon plays his American wife, Alison, who supplements her husband’s income by giving horse-riding lessons. This signifies that she is more down to earth, someone unafraid to physically get her hands dirty, sort of a yin to Rory’s slithery, deceitful yang.

They have two kids, do Rory and Alison: Teen Samantha (Oona Roche, “The Morning Show” TV series) and preteen Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell, “ Captain Fantastic ”). Like their mother, the children are uprooted from their USA comfort zone and tossed into the wild, zany world of Britain. They are each enrolled in snooty private schools, the better for one to make bad-influence friends and for another to be bullied by larger students for the crime of not being British. Oh, and did I mention that the family moves directly into an old mansion that’s far larger than their needs? It seems Rory likes to tell people he’s rich (he is not rich), and having a mansion and kids in private schools helps sell that image.

This trans-Atlantic move has a significant impact on each of the four. Well, in Rory’s case, his prodigal-son return to his old company is kind of a hero’s homecoming; his old mentor Arthur (Michael Culkin, “ The Good Liar ”) is glad to have him back in the fold after some twenty years gone. (Naturally, over the course of the film the viewer will learn of the circumstances of Rory’s initial departure, and they should surprise no one). Alison finds herself increasingly mistrustful of her husband and takes to squirreling away money on her own. She also finds herself with a freaked-out horse, also shipped over from the States. The horse is not pleased with the move at all. Meanwhile, the kids are being neglected.

It should come as no surprise that Rory is a bit of a liar. His lies aren’t even convincing; he’s one of those fibbers who just overwhelms people by talking at and over them, making it harder for them to spot the problem. He likes to think of himself as a schmoozer and a high roller, but he’s not very smooth with anyone, let alone clients, and he’s definitely not money-rich. He’s the kind of guy who thinks he’s amazing and honestly believes everyone else agrees when in fact his self confidence just gives a strong early impression. After that, people start to see the facade crumbling, and now Alison is seeing the entire thing come crashing down as Rory tries to make things work in England.

I had in my mind that this was going to be a little more . . . well, interesting. An online synopsis states something about “a twisted turn,” and I spent the entire movie waiting for something, anything, to happen. There are some allusions to the house being scary, and since it’s so large and empty, one might get the impression that the building itself will play a role in the “twisted” nature of the plot. Maybe Alison finds out about Rory’s lies and there’s a big confrontation between them and the house. Spoiler alert — like much of the plot, the house can only bore the viewer to death.

The Nest is only 107 minutes, about average for movies these days, but it felt at least twice as long. There’s no urgency and nothing exciting except for the characters’ own histrionics. Boy, if shouting at a spouse were only an Olympic event, eh? And there are plenty of red herrings in the movie, plot threads that simply go nowhere or make no sense. I’m all for showing, not telling, but this film couldn’t do either right. Add in some truly jarring cuts from scene to scene and you have all the makings for a dull, dull time.

Tagged: business , England , marriage , secret , wealth

For more reviews, visit Frothy Ruminations , the oldest review site you've never, ever heard of. Now in color! Remember - there's no need not to be critical. Kittens are critical of you; we should learn from them. And who doesn't love kittens? Ergo, cogit sum! QED! Whatever. I'm going to go have a kitten sandwich. Don't wait up.

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Review: ‘Cuckoo’ hatches B-movie energy and arthouse style in Hunter Schafer’s divisive horror nest

With an intriguing concept that feels genuinely fresh and fantastic performances by Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens , Cuckoo is another great addition to NEON’s horror catalog. Still, the movie’s scattered storytelling makes this a divisive release.

Cuckoo is framed through the eyes of Gretchen (Schafer), a 17-year-old forced to move in with her father (Marton Csokas) after her mother’s passing. The turmoil of a teenager’s grieving is amplified by the fact Gretchen’s father has a new wife (Jessica Henwick) and daughter (Mila Lieu), leading her to feel like an intruder barging into the perfect family. The sour cherry on top of Gretchen’s rotten cake is that her father, and therefore her, is relocating to a remote resort in Bavaria, Germany, where her stepmother was hired to build a new tourist complex.

Gretchen’s tragic life is ripe for exploring the horrors of isolation and family drama. Still, from its first act, Cuckoo underlines evil lurks in the shadow of the Bavarian forest. The resort owner, Herr König (Stevens), is obviously hiding a dark secret connected to the strange events happening in the place and the mysterious reason why he demands Gretchen’s stepmother oversee the construction of the new building in person. As an outsider in every sense, Gretchen finds herself in the middle of a grim conspiracy as she and the audience uncover the truth together.

Cuckoo could have used its intriguing background to build any number of spine-chilling stories. Yet, the movie remixes classic creature feature tropes to simultaneously honor horror’s tradition of offering deranged entertainment and the new wave of genre movies that put character before plot. Without spoiling the movie’s surprise, it suffices to say that your mileage might vary depending on how willing you are to go with the flow and accept the weird (albeit fun) things Cuckoo conjures on the silver screen.

It’s curious how Cuckoo fits so well with other NEON 2024 releases. Like Immaculate and Longlegs before it, Cuckoo elevates a concept that would fit like a glove in the B movie scene by giving filmmakers the budget and the autonomy to imprint their unique voices on film. Furthermore, NEON’s horror line boasts astonishing performances by Hollywood veterans and newcomers alike, underlining how horror is a fertile ground to cultivate acting talent.

The menace at Cuckoo ’s core is similar to the wacky concepts in classic grindhouse movies — the kind of production with a budget of 20 bucks and half a sandwich. That is not an insult, on the contrary. Independent horror shows a level of creativity that we don’t usually see in mainstream cinema, as filmmakers are free to explore any idea they have without worrying too much about it being commercial. Still, not everyone might enjoy Cuckoo ’s level of eccentricity.

At the same time, writer and director Tilman Singer refuses to embrace the B-movie energy of Cuckoo ’s concept, trying to stick grandiose motifs in a story that could work better if it leaned harder toward its inherent insanity. Cuckoo has something to say about repressive families, queer identity, the need to reaffirm one’s identity, and even the damage done by a society that reduces women’s bodies to their reproductive capabilities. It’s a barrage of ideas that gets two in the wall to see what sticks, and sadly, not every theme connects cohesively with the main narrative.

At some point in production, Cuckoo got stuck between philosophical arthouse ambitions and the unhinged nature of its main idea. As a result, Cuckoo stretches itself too thin in multiple directions, failing to do anything as well as it could.

Hunter Schafer hiding in NEON horror movie Cuckoo

Cuckoo is still able to enthrall those willing to accept its shortcomings. While the movie never gets too scary, Singer has crafted an atmosphere of constant confusion and paranoia that slowly sucks you into its bizarre version of a Bavarian resort. The movie’s editing, in particular, contributes to the audience feeling lost, a sensation they share with Cuckoo’s protagonists. Once the shell of secrecy is broken and Cuckoo has hatched its terrors, every piece falls nicely into place. However, until then, Cuckoo makes you question what you see and hear while your brains spin around trying to make sense of the quirky story. Disorientation is a powerful tool in genre cinema, and Cuckoo masterfully uses it.

However, the two main reasons to watch Cuckoo are Schafer and Stevens. As Gretchen, Schafer holds all the falling pieces of Cuckoo together, delivering what’s arguably her best acting yet. Gretchen is a layered character struggling with complex emotions while trying to survive an impossible situation, a character that would fall flat without an acting powerhouse to support it. Even though Cuckoo is Schafer’s debut in horror, she shows an instinctive talent to handle the genre’s subtleties in one of the year’s best performances. We can only hope Cuckoo will open more somber doors for her to explore her screen queen potential.

On his turn, Stevens is no stranger to the uncanny, having led one of the strangest and most brilliant TV shows ever, Legion . Still, it’s always a pleasure to see him in horror, a genre where he’s visibly at home . His Herr König is a constant menace, hiding his twisted intentions behind sweet words and fake hospitality. He’s controlled, centered, and cynical, the perfect contrast to Shafer’s Gretchen. The duo’s dynamics alone can carry Cuckoo even when things threaten to fall apart, and Singer owns them both a lot for the movie’s eventual success.

Jan Bluthardt in NEON horror movie Cuckoo

The rest of the supporting cast of Cuckoo also have their moment to shine. Lieu is adorable as Gretchen’s naive younger sister, and Jan Bluthardt deserves a special nod for his take on Detective Henry. Added to the movie’s high production value, these significant side characters raise the Cuckoo experience.

All in all, despite its divisive script, there’s a lot to love in Cuckoo . Plus, when you get to be this creative, you should gain a free pass to some of the eventual pacing problems of your movie. So, while Cuckoo is not the best NEON movie released in 2024, it deserves the hype that has been following it since its trailer release, and it’s a fine addition to this year’s genre landscape.

Intriguing and fresh horror concept
Fantastic performances by Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens
Atmospheric tension and paranoia
Effective use of disorientation as a storytelling tool
Strong supporting cast
Scattered storytelling that may be divisive
Struggles to balance arthouse ambitions with B-movie elements
Some themes don't connect cohesively with the main narrative

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COMMENTS

The Nest movie review & film summary (2020)
That's the question at the heart of "The Nest," a wrenching, beautiful drama about a married couple who relocate from upstate New York to a drafty old estate near London, where their union unravels. The marriage of Rory and Allison ( Jude Law and Carrie Coon) was already frayed. But the spouses were so comfortable with the family's routines ...
The Nest
An entrepreneur and his family begin to unravel after moving into an old country manor in England in the 1980s.
'The Nest' Review: New Home, Old Wounds
Sept. 17, 2020. The Nest. Directed by Sean Durkin. Drama. R. 1h 47m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission ...
'The Nest' review: Jude Law and Carrie Coon come undone
Review: In 'The Nest,' Jude Law and Carrie Coon give us an unnerving anatomy of a marriage. The Los Angeles Times is committed to reviewing new theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 ...
'The Nest' Movie Netflix Review: Stream It Or Skip It?
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Nest is a rich, layered drama, the kind of quiet film sorely missed these days. Thanks to career-best performances from Law and Coon and Sean Durkin's excellent ...
The Nest Is One of the Best Films of the Year
The Nest Is One of the Best Films of the Year Sean Durkin's drama is an acting showcase, and a sneakily profound musing on family.
The Nest review: Jude Law and Carrie Coon build a seductive mystery
Starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, 'The Nest' is a fever-dream exploration of one family's unraveling.
Movie Review: The Nest, Starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon
The Nest is a horror movie from which the actual horror's been drained out, leaving behind only the dread and all the ominous trappings. Like the house that serves as its main location — a ...
The Nest review: Jude Law and Carrie Coon tear into this family drama
The Nest serves as Durkin's follow-up to his 2011 debut Martha Marcy May Marlene, which starred Elisabeth Olsen as a cult survivor still bound by delusions and paranoia.
'The Nest' movie review: Performances by Jude Law, Carrie Coon make
Movie review Set in the 1980s, Sean Durkin's "The Nest" is an elegant, sneaky little drama; not a whole lot happens in it, but the actors' faces make it fascinating. Rory (Jude Law) and ...
'The Nest': Film Review
'The Nest': Film Review 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' director Sean Durkin's latest psychological thriller explores the strains a transatlantic move puts on a marriage.
"The Nest," Reviewed: Jude Law Plays a Banker Who Buys Into Money's
Richard Brody reviews the film "The Nest," starring Jude Law, about a family being torn apart by the furious ambitions and social aspirations of its paterfamilias.
'The Nest': Film Review
Playing a couple whose relationship starts to buckle from the strain of a move to England from New York, Jude Law and Carrie Coon star in 'The Nest,' writer-director Sean Durkin's first feature ...
The Nest
Watch The Nest with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Apple TV. Sean Durkin's sophomore feature The Nest wore me down.
The Nest Review
The Nest is set in the mid-'80s but opens like a '90s thriller, with a wealthy family living in a huge American house, two cars in the garage, an espresso machine, the whole bit (a string ...
'The Nest' Review: Screams From a Marriage
Jude Law and Carrie Coon aren't the only reasons to see 'The Nest'— just the main reasons this domestic nightmare cuts deeply. Our review.
The Nest
The Nest - Metacritic. Summary Rory (Jude Law), an ambitious entrepreneur and former commodities broker, persuades his American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), and their children to leave the comforts of suburban America and return to his native England during the 1980s. Sensing opportunity, Rory rejoins his former firm and leases a centuries-old ...
The Nest
Read an in-depth review and critical analysis of The Nest by film critic Brian Eggert on Deep Focus Review.
'The Nest' Proves that Real Life Can Be Just as Scary as a Horror Movie
Directed and written by Sean Durkin in his latest film since 2011, The Nest tells the story of Rory O'Hara, portrayed by Jude Law, who after a seemingly successful life of entrepreneurism in the States, moves back to London in the late 1980s so he can work for his old company. Along with his loving wife Allison (Carrie Coon) and their children Samantha and Ben (Oona Roche and Charlie ...
The Nest Movie Review
Expert direction overcomes shallowness of mature drama. Read Common Sense Media's The Nest review, age rating, and parents guide.
'The Nest' Ending Explained: What Does the Horse Scene Mean?
Confused by the movie The Nest on Netflix? Read this analysis of The Nest plot summary and ending explained, including that horse scene in The Nest.
The Nest Ending, Explained: What Happens To Rory?
The Nest Ending, Explained: What Happens To Rory? Aahana Swrup. January 16, 2024. Sean Durkin's ' The Nest' (2020) perfectly encapsulates its relatively mundane narrative in an eerie blanket through a pressure cooker of intense emotions and spirals, rendering the film a Gothic psychological thriller. Following Rory O'Hara, a man with ...
Movie Review: The Nest (2020)
Movie review of The Nest (2020) by The Critical Movie Critics | Life for a man and his American family gets twisted after moving into an English country manor.
Review: 'Cuckoo' hatches B-movie energy and arthouse style in Hunter
Review: 'Cuckoo' hatches B-movie energy and arthouse style in Hunter Schafer's divisive horror nest .
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The Nest review: Jude Law and Carrie Coon tear into this family drama like lions

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‘The Nest’: Film Review

Peter Debruge

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Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 26, 2020. Running time: 107 MIN.

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