‘Relatable and hauntingly powerful’: Why Irish horror films should be on your radar-Rebecca Sayce-Entertainment – Metro

Irish horror films have often been overlooked by a global audience – until now

From haunting supernatural tales to shambling zombies, calculating killers, and demonic possession, Irish horror has been firing on all cylinders for decades.

The Irish film-making industry has enjoyed a boom in recent years, from Oscar-winner The Banshees of Inisherin to critically acclaimed film The Quiet Girl paving the way for even more movies to be made.

At the forefront of this movement is Irish horror, with multiple titles garnering international attention and shining a further spotlight on the Emerald Isle.

In 2024, Caveat director Damian McCarthy caused a stir among film fans with his upcoming release Oddity, which had scored a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from advance screenings.

Aislinn Clarke’s Irish language film Fréwaka received rave reviews following its world premiere at Locarno Film Festival, landing distribution in multiple countries and a spot at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.

And John Farrelly’s feature debut An Taibhse, dubbed the world’s first Irish language horror feature, received an overwhelmingly positive reaction following its international premiere at FrightFest 2024 in London.

An Taibhse premiered at FrightFest 2024 (Picture: Instagram/Johnfarrelly_)

Frewaka will be screened at BFI London Film Festival 2024 (Picture: DoubleBand Films)

While Japanese, Korean, and British regional horror are often given their flowers and praised for their traditions and cultural impact, Irish horror has been widely excluded from the conversation – until now.

The Hole In The Ground, You Are Not My Mother, and All You Need Is Death all received overwhelmingly positive reviews in recent years, with Grabbers and Shrooms making waves in the decade before them. But its origins date back far earlier than the 2000s and are rooted in the country’s very history and early folk stories.

‘Ireland has had a profound impact on the global horror genre, starting with its role in the origins of Halloween,’ An Taibhse director John Farrelly tells Metro.co.uk: ‘The ancient festival of Samhain, with traditions like lighting bonfires and wearing costumes to ward off spirits, has evolved into the Halloween celebrations we know today.

‘Ireland’s influence on horror extends further, having shaped one of its most iconic figures — Dracula — through Bram Stoker’s use of Irish folklore, particularly the vampire-like Abhartach.

‘This, along with the country’s rich folklore filled with supernatural beings like banshees, and the gothic literary tradition of writers like Sheridan Le Fanu, who penned Carmilla, laid the foundation for much of modern horror.’

A dark history

As Ireland’s first film production companies were opened in the early 1900s and its first studio, Ardmore Studios, launched in 1958, the country’s political unrest continued to shape the arts.

Ardmore Studios opened in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1958 (Picture: Chris Ware/Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s influenced some of the earliest films in the country (Picture: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The dark history of Ireland’s post-famine era as well as life under British Colonial rule – with the nation becoming a free state in 1922 – is often reflected in pictures of the time, events which Farrelly says left a ‘great scar’ on the country.

‘What makes Irish horror particularly compelling is its deep connection to our collective historical trauma and personal experiences. After years of oppression and dark times, Irish storytelling has evolved as a way to process these experiences, making our horror stories rich with culture and folklore,’ he continued.

‘A significant part of this collective trauma stems from the Great Famine, a devastating period exacerbated by English colonisation. The famine left deep scars on the Irish psyche, creating a sense of loss, despair, and suffering that has been passed down through generations.’

Fréwaka director Aislinn Clarke agreed that horror is a useful tool for ‘exploring trauma through the filtered lens of metaphor and narrative’.

‘Ireland has trauma in spades and our complex history and dark mythologies are fertile ground for horror here. If anything, I wonder why it took the Irish so long to start making horror films in earnest,’ she said.

Rising from the dead

Despite Ireland’s studios coming to fruition, the Censorship of Films Act 1923 restricted scenes and themes that could be seen as ‘a danger to public morality.’

The Censorship of Films Act meant many classic horror movies weren’t shown in Ireland (Picture: Warner Bros. Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

The act, which was amended to stop the banning of films in 2008, meant many classic horror films, such as religious possession flick The Exorcist, weren’t available to the Irish public.

With a lack of horror films influencing potential filmmakers to create their own, these scary pictures struggled to get off the ground and fewer and fewer were released.

But all of this changed in 2004 with Conor McMahon’s Dead Meat, which told the story of a group of Spanish tourists during a visit to Ireland as a mutant strain of mad cow disease turns people into flesh-eating zombies.

Funded by the Irish Film Board, the zombie movie put Irish horror on the map, and was followed a year later by Stephen Bradley’s horror-comedy Boy Eats Girl which was initially banned in Ireland for depicting a graphic suicide.

It tells the story of Nathan (David Leon), who is accidentally killed the same day he declares his love for his long-time friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba). Devastated by his death, Nathan’s mother Grace (Deirdre O’Kane) brings him back from the dead – as a zombie, of course.

Irish director Richard Waters – who created In A Stranger’s House and Bring Out The Fear – said this sense of humour is unique to horror films from Ireland and contributes to their success.

Dead Meat transformed the landscape of Irish horror (Picture: Three Way Distributors)

Horror-comedy Boy Eats Girl followed in 2005 cementing the country’s rising status in horror cinema (Picture: Element Films)

‘Our humour is wry, our love wrapped in hazing. Stories can be dark, romantic, heartbreaking, vindictive, and uplifting all in the same beat,’ he said.

‘It’s the essence of what you get with a lot of the Irish population at home. The shared trauma of famines, colonial rule, and religious corruptions passed down through generations have created a population that knows how to have the craic, but always remembers that it’s a fine line between the good and the bad.’

Returning to its roots

As Irish horror started to make its way into mainstream consciousness following the release of the 2012 creature feature Grabbers, filmmakers began to look inward and utilise Ireland’s relationship with colonialism and the Catholic Church as a way to tell stories.

Clarke’s 2018 film The Devil’s Doorway follows priests Father Thomas Riley (Lalor Roddy) and Father John Thornton (Ciaran Flynn) who are sent to investigate a possible miracle at a Magdalene Asylum in Ireland, also known as a laundry which were real homes run by the church for ‘fallen women.’

The priests instead discover horrors beyond their imagination, reflecting the real-life scandal that surrounded laundries such as the initial discovery of 155 unmarked graves in the convent grounds of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Dublin in 1993 leading to mass outrage and investigations that uncovered other such atrocities.

Ygraine Hackett-Cantabrana, film critic and host of horror podcasts What A Scream and Gore Things, explained how this reflection on the past affects present-day filmmaking.

The Catholic Church has provided a wealth of inspiration for Irish horror films (Picture: 23ten)

The Devil’s Doorway addresses the horrific conditions of Irish laundries (Picture: 23ten)

‘Irish horror is very much like the horror traditions of Japan and South Korea, in that it is so deeply rooted in our history, our folklore and our incredibly traumatic past of colonialism,’ she said.

‘It’s a truly unique type of horror cinema where a lot of the subject matter deals with how much of Ireland’s past is very much still a part of our present and how the country is still haunted by its ghosts, whether that be the unwed mother and baby laundries and the crimes of the Catholic Church, or the residual sadness still felt from the famine, An Gorta Mór.’

Irish horror has come full circle, with the Eire new wave going back to its roots and utilising the rich, mythical folk tales passed down for generations despite colonisation stripping Ireland of much of its native language, religion, stories, and traditions.

Adam Brannon, founder and editor of Movie Metropolis, said the ‘unique cultural folklore’ of Ireland had long been seen as ‘too niche’ for wider audiences.

Films such as The Hallow have seen Irish filmmakers utilise folklore (Picture: Fantastic Films)

The supernatural traditions and folklore of Ireland make their horror films truly unique (Picture: HyneSight Films)

‘But this does appear to be changing,’ he said. ‘It’s this very specificity that makes Irish horror movies so special. Recent examples like The Hole in the Ground, A Dark Song, and The Hallow tap into deep-rooted fears, ancient myths, and a sense of the uncanny that’s uniquely tied to Ireland’s rich history – and of course its stunning landscapes.

Worldwide recognition

Irish horror finally commands global attention, with new titles continually generating buzz in the run-up to their release.

There are a number of reasons why Ireland’s horror scene is garnering much-deserved praise for its innovative and truly terrifying releases, with Waters believing a surge in filmmaking comes from a more affordable way to make films.

He also theorised: ‘It’s worth noting that with horror films being made at all sorts of budgets in Ireland, the decisions on what is “right” or “wrong” to put on screen have been taken out of the hands of financiers and are now in the hands of the artists.

‘Most of us aren’t even working with any budget whatsoever, but in return, no one has the right to divert our voice in our storytelling.’

Everything from funding to audience expectations could have played a part in Irish horror’s popularity (Picture: Sony)

He also added: ‘Another hugely important factor that can’t be overlooked is how much of the population worldwide have an Irish connection.

‘We’ve found the USA to be so supportive of our work, and whenever we talk to people there, inevitably the first thing they’ll tell us is how they are Irish and their granddaddy was from county Limerick.

‘For those people, it’s getting a connection with a voice that, though it speaks the same language, it’s a foreign voice of generations left behind.’

Brannon, however, believes the audience’s attitudes to horror from different age brackets have meant Irish cinema appeals to many more: ‘The recent resurgence we have seen is likely due to a broader appetite for diverse voices and independent filmmakers in cinema.

‘Gen Z cinema-goers in particular are keen to move away from traditional Hollywood tropes and embrace something completely new. They’re the same with celebrity culture too, not as enamoured with this area of pop culture as older generations.’

The future of Irish horror is bright with plenty of terrifying releases on the horizon (Picture: Instagram/johnfarrelly_)

Farrelly thinks it comes down to the content of the films itself, with the troubled and rich history of Ireland working perfectly with the conventions of the horror genre to create unique and engaging stories.

‘The horror genre offers freedom to experiment with ideas and explore complex themes, using metaphors like monsters and ghosts to represent real-life horrors,’ he summarised.

‘Ghost stories are inherently about the past haunting the present, which is a fitting metaphor for trauma and abuse. These narratives externalise internal struggles, making the invisible visible.

‘The supernatural elements create a safe space for audiences to confront heavy themes indirectly, allowing for a more accessible yet impactful exploration of trauma. This ability to evoke deep emotional and psychological responses is what I love most about working within the genre.

‘In essence, Irish horror stands out because it blends deep cultural roots, folklore, and personal history, creating stories that are both relatable and hauntingly powerful.’

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