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10 of the Best Irish Horror Films to Watch on St. Patrick’s Day (Or Any Other Day!)

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One of many exciting developments in the horror genre during the 2000s has been the emergence of so many films coming out of Ireland. Rather than yet another ranking of the Leprechaun franchise (I’ll save you the trouble – Origins is still the worst), this St. Patrick’s Day holiday seems like a good time to celebrate some of the really cool Irish horror films of the last 15 years.

Here are 10 of the best that you should check out.


Boy Eats Girl (2005, dir. Stephen Bradley) – Sure, it seems as though they started with the title and worked backwards, but Boy Eats Girl is a surprisingly charming Irish horror comedy about a high schooler (David Leon) who dies and is brought back to life by his mother, but comes back as a flesh-hungry zombie. This complicates his burgeoning relationship with Jessica (Samantha Mumba), the girl he likes, especially as the zombie virus begins to spread throughout the school. More teen comedy than hardcore horror film, Boy Eats Girl boasts likable characters and some genuine sweetness, plus gets gorier the longer it goes on.


Isolation (2005, dir. Billy O’Brien) – If you’re looking for the movie that makes cows scary, look no further. A cattle farmer allows some of his cows to be genetically modified to increase fertility, but what results is a kind of monstrous parasite with the ability to infect humans as well. While a little on the slow side, Isolation is a good enough riff on John Carpenter’s The Thing to warrant a recommendation. The cast is impressive, too, with early performances from Essie Davis (of The Babadook), Sean Harris (the bad guy from Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation and Fallout), and Ruth Negga.


irish horror wake wood

Wake Wood (2009, dir. David Keating) – A ‘70s-inspired effort in the tradition of Don’t Look Now, Wake Wood is the devastating story of a couple (Eva Birthistle and Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen) who lose their young daughter to a tragic act of animal violence. When a stranger (Timothy Spall) offers to bring her back for a few days so they can have a proper goodbye, the offer is too tempting for the grieving couple to resist. But as anyone who has read or seen Pet Sematary can tell you, something is … off…about the couple’s newly-revived daughter. As someone with young kids, there are a lot of scenes in Wake Wood that are hard to watch, but that’s a testament to the movie’s power and effectiveness. Consider yourself warned. This was the first movie released by the revived Hammer Films.


Citadel (2012, dir. Ciarán Foy) – One of the better killer kid movies of the last 20 years, Citadel finds a man (Aneurin Barnard) traumatized by tragedy and becoming agoraphobic, making it difficult to raise his infant daughter alone. The screenplay is based in part on a real life trauma experienced by Foy (who would go on to direct Sinister 2), which helps explain why the movie’s brand of paranoid psychological terror feels so immediate and real. It’s Polanski’s Repulsion meets Cronenberg’s The Brood.


irish horror grabbers

Grabbers (2012, dir. Jon Wright) – One of the few giant creature features ever produced out of Ireland boasts a most inspired premise: a town, under siege by giant tentacled monsters with an allergy to alcohol, must stay drunk in order to stay alive and save the day. By leaning into a national stereotype in the premise of the movie, Grabbers manages to be funny and charming while still delivering the goods as a monster movie. Comparisons to Tremors are inevitable but apt.


irish horror the canal

The Canal (2014, dir. Ivan Kavanagh) – This might be my favorite Irish horror movie on this list. Rupert Evans (The Boy) plays a film archivist who discovers, through an old film, that a brutal murder took place at his house in the early 1900s. His cheating wife then goes missing around the same time that he begins to see ghosts. Tense and expertly constructed, The Canal is a slow-moving descent into a nightmare, with a streak of Fulci-esque Italian horror in the way that the supernatural will suddenly shatter through reality, blurring the lines of what is real and what isn’t. There’s an element of David Lynch’s Lost Highway as well in how director Kavanagh uses film as memory, especially as a way of remembering things the way we want to remember them.


The Hallow (2015, dir. Corin Hardy) – A couple travels into a remote forest in Ireland to conduct some research, only to find themselves besieged by creatures who want their infant son and are confined to darkness. Once again combining family tragedy and folklore, this time with an element of body horror, The Hallow fits in with a lot of the Irish horror on this list but manages to stand out as being a rare creature feature that’s well executed, if a little familiar.


irish horror a dark song

A Dark Song (2016, dir. Liam Gavin) – Like Wake Wood before it, A Dark Song centers on a woman (Catherine Walker) who, overwhelmed by grief, consults an occultist (Steve Oram) to perform a ceremony that she feels will help her find closure. Whereas Wake Wood is primarily concerned with what happens after the child is brought back, A Dark Song is much more procedural in terms of performing the rites of the ceremony, which get darker and more challenging as the film goes on. The debut feature from writer/director Liam Gavin is essentially an intense two-character drama anchored by a pair of excellent performances and a willingness to fearlessly commit to going places other movies might not dare.


irish horror lodgers

The Lodgers (2017, dir. Brian O’Malley) – Director Brian O’Malley’s follow-up to 2014’s Let Us Prey (a nasty little slice of Irish horror that would also be right at home on this list and is well worth a watch) is a gorgeous period ghost story about a pair of twins haunted by a curse that keeps them trapped inside their deteriorating family mansion. More concerned with etheral Gothic beauty than actual scares – more The Innocents than The Shining – the movie is, like so much Irish horror, about past tragedies and folklore traditions. It’s fascinating to see how many films produced by the country seem to be attempting to deal with their national history inside the horror genre.


The Hole in the Ground (2019, dir. Lee Cronin) – The most recent title on this list, 2019’s Irish horror movie The Hole in the Ground tells the story of a mother (Seána Kerslake) whose young son begins acting very strangely after they move into a house in the woods near an enormous sinkhole. The movie plays like the summation of every other Irish horror film on this list: it’s got the Irish countryside (Isolation, The Hallow), scary kids (Citadel, Wake Wood), parents and children at the forefront (Citadel, Wake Wood, A Dark Song), and Irish folklore (The Hallow, The Lodgers, Wake Wood). This is not to suggest the movie is derivative, just that there appear to be patterns across the country’s genre output – certain themes and tropes that pop up again and again and which are very much present in The Hole in the Ground. It’s like the Greatest Hits of Irish Horror.

This article was originally published on March 14, 2019.

Editorials

‘Leprechaun Returns’ – The Charm of the Franchise’s Legacy Sequel

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The erratic Leprechaun franchise is not known for sticking with a single concept for too long. The namesake (originally played by Warwick Davis) has gone to L.A., Las Vegas, space, and the ‘hood (not once but twice). And after an eleven-year holiday since the Davis era ended, the character received a drastic makeover in a now-unmentionable reboot. The critical failure of said film would have implied it was time to pack away the green top hat and shillelagh, and say goodbye to the nefarious imp. Instead, the Leprechaun series tried its luck again.

The general consensus for the Leprechaun films was never positive, and the darker yet blander Leprechaun: Origins certainly did not sway opinions. Just because the 2014 installment took itself seriously did not mean viewers would. After all, creator Mark Jones conceived a gruesome horror-comedy back in the early nineties, and that format is what was expected of any future ventures. So as horror legacy sequels (“legacyquels”) became more common in the 2010s, Leprechaun Returns followed suit while also going back to what made the ‘93 film work. This eighth entry echoed Halloween (2018) by ignoring all the previous sequels as well as being a direct continuation of the original. Even ardent fans can surely understand the decision to wipe the slate clean, so to speak.

Leprechaun Returns “continued the [franchise’s] trend of not being consistent by deciding to be consistent.” The retconning of Steven Kostanski and Suzanne Keilly’s film was met with little to no pushback from the fandom, who had already become accustomed to seeing something new and different with every chapter. Only now the “new and different” was familiar. With the severe route of Origins a mere speck in the rearview mirror, director Kotanski implemented a “back to basics” approach that garnered better reception than Zach Lipovsky’s own undertaking. The one-two punch of preposterous humor and grisly horror was in full force again.

LEPRECHAUN

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

With Warwick Davis sitting this film out — his own choice — there was the foremost challenge of finding his replacement. Returns found Davis’ successor in Linden Porco, who admirably filled those blood-stained, buckled shoes. And what would a legacy sequel be without a returning character? Jennifer Aniston obviously did not reprise her final girl role of Tory Redding. So, the film did the next best thing and fetched another of Lubdan’s past victims: Ozzie, the likable oaf played by Mark Holton. Returns also created an extension of Tory’s character by giving her a teenage daughter, Lila (Taylor Spreitler).

It has been twenty-five years since the events of the ‘93 film. The incident is unknown to all but its survivors. Interested in her late mother’s history there in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, Lila transferred to the local university and pledged a sorority — really the only one on campus — whose few members now reside in Tory Redding’s old home. The farmhouse-turned-sorority-house is still a work in progress; Lila’s fellow Alpha Epsilon sisters were in the midst of renovating the place when a ghost of the past found its way into the present.

The Psycho Goreman and The Void director’s penchant for visceral special effects is noted early on as the Leprechaun tears not only into the modern age, but also through poor Ozzie’s abdomen. The portal from 1993 to 2018 is soaked with blood and guts as the Leprechaun forces his way into the story. Davis’ iconic depiction of the wee antagonist is missed, however, Linden Porco is not simply keeping the seat warm in case his predecessor ever resumes the part. His enthusiastic performance is accentuated by a rotten-looking mug that adds to his innate menace.

LEPRECHAUN RETURNS sequel

Pictured: Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, and Sai Bennett as Lila, Katie and Rose in Leprechaun Returns.

The obligatory fodder is mostly young this time around. Apart from one luckless postman and Ozzie — the premature passing of the latter character removed the chance of caring about anyone in the film — the Leprechaun’s potential prey are all college aged. Lila is this story’s token trauma kid with caregiver baggage; her mother thought “monsters were always trying to get her.” Lila’s habit of mentioning Tory’s mental health problem does not make a good first impression with the resident mean girl and apparent alcoholic of the sorority, Meredith (Emily Reid). Then there are the nicer but no less cursorily written of the Alpha Epsilon gals: eco-conscious and ex-obsessive Katie (Pepi Sonuga), and uptight overachiever Rose (Sai Bennett). Rounding out the main cast are a pair of destined-to-die bros (Oliver Llewellyn Jenkins, Ben McGregor). Lila and her peers range from disposable to plain irritating, so rooting for any one of them is next to impossible. Even so, their overstated personalities make their inevitable fates more satisfying.

Where Returns excels is its death sequences. Unlike Jones’ film, this one is not afraid of killing off members of the main cast. Lila, admittedly, wears too much plot armor, yet with her mother’s spirit looming over her and the whole story — comedian Heather McDonald put her bang-on Aniston impersonation to good use as well as provided a surprisingly emotional moment in the film — her immunity can be overlooked. Still, the other characters’ brutal demises make up for Lila’s imperviousness. The Leprechaun’s killer set-pieces also happen to demonstrate the time period, seeing as he uses solar panels and a drone in several supporting characters’ executions. A premortem selfie and the antagonist’s snarky mention of global warming additionally add to this film’s particular timestamp.

Critics were quick to say Leprechaun Returns did not break new ground. Sure, there is no one jetting off to space, or the wacky notion of Lubdan becoming a record producer. This reset, however, is still quite charming and entertaining despite its lack of risk-taking. And with yet another reboot in the works, who knows where the most wicked Leprechaun ever to exist will end up next.


Horror contemplates in great detail how young people handle inordinate situations and all of life’s unexpected challenges. While the genre forces characters of every age to face their fears, it is especially interested in how youths might fare in life-or-death scenarios.

The column Young Blood is dedicated to horror stories for and about teenagers, as well as other young folks on the brink of terror.

Leprechaun Returns movie

Pictured: Linden Porco as The Leprechaun in Leprechaun Returns.

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