Just when you think the folk-horror vogue is all played out, along comes Aislinn Clarke’s textured delve into Celtic mythology and intergenerational trauma.
Siobhán (Clare Monnelly), known to her friends as Shoo, is a care assistant tidying things away after the suicide of her estranged abusive mother when she accepts an assignment in the Gaeltacht.
Her reluctant patient is Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), an agoraphobic woman who believes the aos sí – the folkloric beings at the evil end of the fairy spectrum – abducted her on her wedding night decades earlier. Peig is concerned that Shoo and her Ukrainian fiancee, Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya), are expecting a baby. Births, marriages and deaths form thin spaces for malevolent otherworldly forces, she warns.
In common with The Devil’s Doorway, this writer and director’s debut horror film, from 2018, Fréwaka ambitiously mines Irish mythology and history for socially conscious spookery. Peig characterises the underworld as a place of coffin ships, Magdalene laundries, blighted fields and violent streets. These national traumas are amplified by a revealing rummage around Irish iconography: mummers, Sacred Heart lamps and a goat that could be Black Phillip’s transatlantic cousin are employed to unsettling effect.
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Unfriendly whispering locals add to the forlorn heroine’s distress. A creepy traditional ballad seems to play wherever she goes. Is the grief-stricken Shoo hostage to her older charge’s delusions or is something monstrous in the “house below the house”? Terrific performances by Monnelly and Ní Neachtain keep us guessing.
Narayan Van Maele, the cinematographer behind the Oscar-winning An Irish Goodbye, sneaks along as Shoo wanders through spooky corridors and along deserted country roads. Nicola Moroney’s production design decks branches with ribbons, scissors and other mysterious talismans. And never mind the straw men: Die Hexen’s disquieting electronic score is the scariest thing in the movie.
In cinemas from Friday, April 25th, with previews from Wednesday, April 23rd
