Okay, I’m going to try really hard to do this without spoilers. There’s a twist ending here that, in my humble opinion, works. All I’ll say is that the monster may not be what you think it is. The only problem is that there are at least eight movies titled The Nest, and you’ll need to find one from 2019 if you want to see what I’m talking about here. Don’t read any summaries beforehand because you want to let this wash over you and draw you in. Although distributed by Universal, this Italian Euro-horror remains relatively unknown. That’s really a shame since this movie delivers. A woman, an heiress, has a paraplegic son that she never allows to leave the estate. She’d training him to run things when she can’t and she strictly limits the people he can see.
Teaching him classical culture, she won’t expose him to anything modern. Then a teenage girl his age comes to live on the estate. She was being raised by the same man who raised the heiress, but she knows things. She knows about rock music, and she understand the way the world works. The heiress, however, wants her son to experience none of this. Afraid of what might happen, she sends the girl away. In the meantime, we learn that the heiress kills those who are sick among her staff. She employs a very creepy doctor who does whatever she orders, noting that she has saved them all. The question is, is it best to live in such a bubble? Is life so isolated worth living? The heiress brings the girl back, but begins, with her doctor, to alter her behavior using electroshock treatment.
The Nest is one of those movies where you spend nearly the entire thing being misdirected. When it’s over you think back on what you’ve seen and it does make sense. Along the way, you know something’s not right. It’s creepy in a way more than old, castle-like houses can account for. I like gothic films like this. There are disturbing moments that punctuate what seems like an idyllic lifestyle. The heiress knows that survival equates to a cultured existence, but she never tells her son why. This film shares some territory with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in fact, they could be next door neighbors at points. They both have a similar message, at least in part. Efforts to build a paradise are beyond human capacity. We need the outside world even if we fear it.
