I think this is the first film I’ve watched that is entirely in the Welsh language and of course being one in the horror genre, it mines related folk tales and superstitions for good effect. Unfortunately that is pretty all that this film has going for it as it is otherwise a fairly straightforward and standard horror setup. Some of the gory imagery may be alright but it’s too restricted in its scope and probably isn’t worth your time.

At a modern, newly-built house in the countryside, a wealthy family prepares to host a dinner party. The wife Glenda hires a girl named Cadi from the nearby village to help out. She arrives on foot and speaks little. The father Gwyn is also the MP for the area and boasts of shooting two rabbits for dinner. Their two sons are forced to participate, with one being a drug addict who misses London and the other a health fanatic who is obsessed with his own body. Naturally Cadi is not a normal girl at all: she leaves dirt trails behind her when agitated, causes Gwyn to experience painful sounds when she is near and so on. She also sings a creepy nursery rhyme about not awakening a sleeping spirit under the land. Everything becomes clear when we learn that the purpose of the dinner party is to get their neighbor to open up their land for mining just as they have and that is the source of their newfound wealth.

Like many other horror films, this feels promising at first as there is some possibility of the characters being more than just paper-thin archetypes and Cadi may be more complex than just a vengeful spirit of nature. The drug addict son Guto for example seems like he may be sympathetic even if he prefers the city to the countryside while as my wife noted, it is fascinating how the other son Gweirydd is completely in love with his own body. As Gwyn is the local MP, perhaps there is more of a plot here than just the standard massacre everyone formula? Unfortunately not only is that really all there is but this is very much the kind of project that was made by renting a fancy house and then using it as the sole location for filming. As a result it feels very constricted in its scope and they are even visibly too scared to do any serious damage to the house as part of the consequences of awakening some ancient horror.

There is some potential in how the imagery consistently equates capitalist excess with overconsumption as when their businessman guest can’t help himself from eating up all of the food like a pig. But the film never quite follows up on interesting character development directions such as Glenda’s personal private retreat within the house being literally a prison cell or finding a good way to turn Gweirydd ‘s narcissism against himself. Similarly there is nothing at all interesting about a vengeful nature spirit with no personality. The use of the Welsh language gives this film some novelty value but that’s not enough to make it worth watching.