Butler's Cinema Scene

Carrie Coon, Jude Law

“THE NEST” My rating: B

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The opening scene of “The Nest” contrasts images of moneyed American domesticity — Dad playing soccer with his kids, Mom training horses — against a menacing musical score right out of a horror film.

“The Nest” isn’t a horror entry per se, but over the  course of a downwardly-spiraling 107 minutes it does reveal the horrors lurking just below the surface of what looks like an ideal household. It’s a great topic for writer/director Sean Durkin’s followup to his dark 2011 thriller “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

And it provides an acting tour de force from Jude Law and Carrie Coon.

Early on the British-born Rory (Law) informs wife Allison (Coon) that he’s been approached by a former boss to return to the U.K. for a prestigious position in acquisitions and mergers. Allison is at first reluctant to leave the States (she’s a Yank), but gradually gives in to the promise of more money and a change of scenery.

When she and the kids — Samantha (Oona Roche), her teenage daughter by a previous marriage, and 10-year-old Ben (Charlie Shotwell) — arrive in London they are driven out into the burbs to a huge Georgian mansion Rory has rented for them. Despite the home’s storied history (apparently members of Led Zepplin lived there for a spell), its full-size soccer field for Ben and space in which to build a stable for their horses, Allison is turned off by the place.  It’s too big, too dark, too pretentious.

Rory, though, is on a hubristic roll, full of plans to get rich. To prove his newfound status, he presents Allison with a full-length fur coat.  Though she makes snide remarks about Rory’s sharkish fellow employees and their posh, social-climbing wives, she still finds excuses to pull on that expensive wrap.

It doesn’t take long for cracks to appear.

At a big welcoming reception for Rory, his Murdoch-ish boss (Michael Culkin) lets drop that Rory called him out of the blue and began selling himself.  So much for his tale to Allison of being sought out for the gig.

Allison is further disturbed to learn that Rory hasn’t been paying the bills, that in fact he’s pretty much cleaned out their bank account.

The tension between their parents starts affecting the kids.  Samantha rebels, hosting drunken blowouts for her new pals when the folks are spending the night in London. Ben is even more deeply affected; bullied at school, he’s quickly sliding into depression.

And it soon becomes apparent that despite his board room swagger, Rory is more show than substance. In fact, his renumeration is determined by the deals he can pull together, and lately he’s been firing blanks. Basically he’s an insecure  working-class bloke punching way beyond his weight class.

“The Nest” is a slowly-tightening noose as it dawns on Allison that she really doesn’t know the man she’s married to.

The viewer, in fact, is privy to one revelation about which Allison remains ignorant.  Rory drops in on his mother (the great Anne Reid); in a chilly scene we learn that he hasn’t contacted her in years and that she is unaware she has a grandson.

This is dark, disturbing stuff, yet it’s hard to tear your eyes away from “The Nest.”  Durkin knows how to visually emphasize his characters’ growing isolation from one another, and he’s written dialogue for Law and Coon guaranteed to send chills of terror (and recognition) down the viewer’s spines.

| Robert W. Butler