Editorials
Irish Horror ‘Isolation’ Terrifies ‘Til the Cows Come Home [Horrors Elsewhere]
Cows are considered to be the perfect livestock. Not only do they provide food like milk and beef, their byproducts yield everyday goods, including leather, ointments, soap, and toilet paper. Yet as much as cows do for humans, there is always someone who thinks they can do more. Synthetic hormones and gene-editing are common practices when trying to improve cattle, but the kind of biological tampering seen in the 2005 movie Isolation is utterly twisted. These scientists believed they could make a better cow; one that would greatly benefit mankind.
Needless to say, they were wrong.
This atmospheric rural horror, shot outside of Dublin, is based on the director and writer’s rustic upbringing. Billy O’Brien grew up on a farm, but until he moved away to the city, he never realized how unique his childhood experience was. Seeing how his city friends reacted to a story about “calving” ultimately inspired O’Brien’s first movie. Of course he needed something more to go on other than just life on a farm. Which is where the monster cow comes in.
While Ireland is certainly smaller than the U.S. of A, the Emerald Isle has no shortage of cows. There is also so much competition, which is why farms like the one in O’Brien’s debut are struggling to survive. John Lynch’s character in Isolation is in over his head trying to save his late father’s ol’ dairy farm. The milk is not quite dried up, but no one is coming to collect it. Hence Dan allowing his Bessies and Buttercups to become guinea pigs in a mysterious experiment. The desperate farmer takes what is essentially blood money as his cattle are turned into incubators for evil.
Dan has allowed his farmyard to become the testing ground for a bio-genetics firm. And as of late, his only human contact has been with the firm’s emissary, a scientist named John (Marcel Iureș, The Cave), and a local veterinarian and friend named Orla (Essie Davis, The Babadook). A test subject goes into labor late at night, but something is off about this birth. So, Dan seeks help from the young couple crashing on his land, a pair of star-crossed lovers played by Sean Harris (Creep) and Ruth Negga (World War Z). This stressful scene employs the very same calving jack used by O’Brien’s father. The medieval-looking device cranks up the tension as it slowly wrenches the calf from its mother.
Isolation goes straight from gestating horror to birthing it. Orla eventually shows up to check on the calf, but after the baby takes a chunk out of Dan’s finger, it’s clear something must be done. Orla and Dan’s struggle to “humanely” put the newborn down, using a cattle gun, is without question unsettling to watch. The mother cow literally climbing the walls to protect her young adds to the chaos of the sad scene.
If the last two set pieces have somehow failed to jangle the nerves, the calf’s autopsy is sure to make the skin crawl. Despite her proximity to bad science, Orla only knows so much about the firm’s absolute endgame. What she finds inside the calf is where Isolation earns its reputation as “The Thing set on a farm.” This calf was already pregnant with multiple fetuses. Six of them, to be exact. And each one has its skeleton on the outside. This horrifying discovery reveals John and his team wanted to “create more fertile calves.” They succeeded, but not quite as they had originally envisioned.
One of the six malformed fetuses has survived the odds and is now looking for a way off this farm. The carnivorous cow spawn in question, which resembles a skeletal larva, is well on its way to becoming the apex predator in a place with no competition to begin with. And the only resolution is to contain the threat by any means possible. O’Brien’s affection for John Carpenter’s ‘82 cult classic is apparent in the second and third acts, but the imitation is well done, not to mention a smidge more plausible despite the absurdity involved.
Isolation stokes natural fears of invasion and disease. The rapidly growing creature’s infectious bite only raises the stakes further and conveys the story’s sense of urgency. Apart from the hospital scene at the end, everything occurs on Dan’s farm. So the sensation of never being able to escape, regardless of the open air and vehicles readily available, is unmistakable. The audience grows increasingly claustrophobic as the script pulls the surviving characters into the pit of hell that is the monster’s makeshift lair. Adrian Johnston’s first horror score heightens these choice moments with dramatic strings and modified farm sounds.
Isolation’s dreary setting matches its cast. The characters are not so much unlikable as they are wretched. Harris and Negga’s characters, Jamie and Mary, are on the run from their quarreling families, so their despondency stems from an unspoken culture clash. Meanwhile, Dan is partly to blame for the festering dilemma on his hands, but Lynch does a fantastic job of manifesting his character’s self-loathing and humanizing his mistake. Davis, whose hands-on approach to her role included sticking her whole arm inside a cow’s rear-end, is regretfully on screen for a short amount of time. However, it’s clear she shows great remorse for sleeping with the enemy. And while Iureș ticks off the “mad scientist” box of this genre outing, his John character makes the effort to right his wrongs, no matter how radical his methods are.
Lovers of accidental monsters, science gone awry, and suffocating environments are urged to watch this hidden gem. The 2000s was a busy time for British and Irish horror, which explains why O’Brien’s movie got lost in the crowd. Its obscurity is more disappointing than surprising, but there was no shortage of acclaim back then. Beautifully shot, grotesque and thoroughly disturbing, Isolation is aching to be rediscovered.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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