The stepchildren are genuinely terrific in this switch on the usual dynamic where the stepmother is the bad guy
Inaccurately titled horror film The Unfamiliar purees together an assortment of tired tropes with just enough originality and admirable craftsmanship to make 89 minutes of jump scares and twists visible from outer space reasonably bearable. Its first move is to make us wonder whether main protagonist Izzy (Jemima West), a
British army doctor just home from
Afghanistan, is really picking up on weird supernatural shenanigans in her rural home or suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder. Something definitely doesn’t seem right with her husband Ethan (Christopher Dane) who has suddenly shifted away from studying Polynesian totems (there’s a particularly scary looking one in the baby’s bedroom) in favour of writing children’s fiction. Meanwhile, her pre-adolescent son (Harry McMillan-Hunt) seems to be hiding secrets, and her adolescent daughter (Rebecca Hanssen) is acting just like, er, a stroppy teenager. In a somewhat witty reversal of expectations, CCTV camera footage of what Izzy thought were freaky events with demonic presences reveals nothing is there at all. Or is there?