Film

The Nest

Name: The Nest
Genre: Drama
Released: 2020
Cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Charlie Shotwell, Oona Roche, Adeel Akhtar

Other titles called The Nest: the 1988 film, the 2020 series (BBC One).

Drama

A prosperous American family relocates to 1980s England when the father pursues a dubious business venture, only to find their marriage and stability corroding in an unfamiliar country and crumbling manor house. It's a portrait of ambition curdling into delusion, watched through the eyes of those who suffer for his choices. Tense, claustrophobic, and quietly devastating.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow-burning domestic dramas where the real tension is money, marriage and a husband's private bravado, and you enjoy watching a family's comfortable story quietly curdle.

Skip it if you want a story that moves briskly or resolves its conflicts cleanly, since this one lingers on mounting unease and gives you little release from its couple's arguments.

What it asks of you: Patience for a two-hour-ish stretch of rising pressure, with long rooms, tense silences and dialogue that circles the same grievances until they finally bite.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Krisha2016

Ari Aster's debut shares The Nest's suffocating family dynamics and the way addiction and denial poison everyone nearby. A father's choices destroy his household from within, watched with unflinching empathy for all involved.

But It's slower and more oblique than The Nest, with less conventional narrative structure. The subject matter—drug addiction and its fallout—is relentlessly bleak.

Moonlight2016

Both films trust quiet observation over exposition, letting you feel family fracture through small moments and silences. Each examines how environment and circumstance shape identity and relationships across years.

But Moonlight is more poetic and less overtly dramatic. It requires patience with ambiguity and won't spell out its emotional beats.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Yorgos Lanthimos creates the same sense of creeping dread and moral unraveling. A family's carefully constructed life begins to collapse, and we watch them trapped by circumstances largely of their own making.

But It's deeply unsettling and verges on horror. The pacing is deliberately strange, and it doesn't resolve in ways you might expect or want.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Nest

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Stalker1979

Both present ambition as a kind of spiritual infection that spreads through a family or group, poisoning everything it touches while the infected person remains convinced of their righteousness.

Andrei Tarkovsky's science-fiction meditation on desire, ambition, and the corruption of the soul. Like The Nest, it's about a man leading others into a place that promises transformation but only reveals what was already broken inside him. The methodical pacing makes the spiritual decay palpable.

But It's 163 minutes of philosophical science fiction with minimal action. Tarkovsky demands you move at his pace, and many find that punishing rather than rewarding.

Exodus: Gods and Kings2014

Another intimate portrait of a marriage fractured by one partner's choices and delusions. It has The Nest's sense of claustrophobia and the way money troubles can poison every relationship in a household.

But It's a very quiet Swedish film with minimal plot. If you need conventional dramatic beats, you'll find it frustratingly slow.

A Ghost Story2017

Both films meditate on home, belonging, and the ways families are haunted—literally or figuratively—by the choices that bind them. Quiet, strange, and emotionally devastating in unexpected ways.

But It's experimental and grief-focused in ways that might feel self-indulgent. The premise itself—a ghost in a sheet—could feel precious rather than moving.

Manchester by the Sea2016

Kenneth Lonergan explores damage that reverberates through families, and how place and memory interact. Like The Nest, it understands that some pain doesn't resolve, only settles into a new shape.

But It's deliberately paced and emotionally heavy. The protagonist isn't sympathetic, and the film won't offer you catharsis or redemption.

The Power of the Dog2021

Jane Campion crafts a slow-burn study of masculinity and resentment poisoning a household. The period detail and family dynamics carry similar weight to The Nest's exploration of ambition and its costs.

But At nearly two and a half hours, it moves at its own pace. The twist, when it arrives, divides audiences on whether it justifies the journey.

Minari2021

Both follow families attempting reinvention in unfamiliar places, discovering that chasing a dream can fracture the bonds meant to survive the journey. Tender but unsentimental about how hope and resentment coexist.

But It's quieter and more forgiving than The Nest. If you're looking for sharp criticism of the patriarch's choices, Minari is gentler.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's film shares The Nest's sense of alienation and otherness. Both examine how someone can appear to belong while remaining fundamentally disconnected, moving through a landscape that feels hostile or indifferent.

But It's abstract and atmospheric rather than narrative-driven. If you need plot clarity or character motivation spelled out, this will frustrate you intensely.

The Get Down2016

Both use a specific historical moment (1980s England, 1970s New York) as more than backdrop—the era itself becomes a character that either enables or crushes the characters' dreams.

Baz Luhrmann's Netflix series about 1970s New York captures the same collision between aspiration and circumstance, the way environment shapes what's possible. It's visually sumptuous and sociologically sharp about class and ambition.

But It was cancelled after two seasons on a cliffhanger. The second season sprawls and loses focus. You'll be left frustrated, not satisfied.

A Separation2011

Both understand that family fracture is rarely about one person's moral failure—it's structural, circumstantial, and involves everyone's complicity, even the children who had no choice in the matter.

Asghar Farhadi's Iranian masterpiece about a marriage dissolving under economic and social pressure. It's precise, unflinching, and refuses easy villains—everyone is partly right and partly wrong, just like The Nest's portrait of the O'Hara family.

But It's a legal procedural focused more on systems than emotions. If you want catharsis, you won't find it. The film asks you to sit with ambiguity and pain without resolution.