We’re living in the Golden Age of Irish Horror and we’re dead excited about it. Throughout October we’re celebrating Samhain with interviews, reviews and retrospectives, that show how Ireland has risen to the top of the horror hierarchy.

Ireland is haunted.
Not by the spirits of its infamous writers walking the halls of Trinity Library, nor by the spectres of its rich musical tradition that you can find in every live venue in the country. No, Ireland is haunted by the ghosts of its dark treatment towards women and in particular, mothers. In fact, Ireland is one big haunted house, each room revealing one terrifying legacy after another. So it’s no wonder that Ireland’s horror cinema is reckoning with this aspect of the country’s past. With directors like Aislinn Clarke, Kate Dolan and Lee Cronin making films that directly centre themselves around the experience of motherhood, and society’s treatment of mothers and their children, Irish horror has developed a terrifying legacy with mothers at its epicentre.
From the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, right up until 1996, Ireland was home to institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes, run by the Catholic Church and supported by the Irish state government, usually for profit. The Magdalene Laundries were home to unwed mothers, “promiscuous” women, women who were sexually abused and those who were deemed as a “burden” to their family and state and were then forced into free labour. Within these walls, they were subjected to extreme abuse, stripped of their names and given identification numbers, their hair was cut, and they were forced not to speak.
One would hope that after the last laundry closed its doors in 1996, Ireland’s mistreatment of women would have ceased, but unfortunately this was not the case. It was only in 2018, and after a lengthy campaign and referendum, abortion was made legal. Before this landmark change of constitution, the eighth amendment had equated the life of a foetus to the same as that of the mother. All abortion was illegal, forcing tens of thousands of pregnant people to travel abroad for abortions and unfortunately, women died from not being given life-saving abortions. Instead of dropping pregnant people at the doors of laundries, Ireland was exporting them, or killing them.
There is one Irish horror film that has not shied away from the topic of Ireland’s sordid history of the Magdalene laundries and that is The Devil’s Doorway (2018). Directed and co-written by one of Ireland’s brightest horror creatives Aislinn Clarke. It tells the story of two Catholic priests in the 1960s being sent to a laundry run by a ruthless mother superior, to investigate claims of a miracle. Once there, they discover that not only are the “fallen” women institutionalised being abused by the nuns, but that the evil within the laundry’s walls runs much deeper than first impressions suggest.
Whilst the supernatural elements and traditional horror aspect of this film are a downright scary lesson in how to use the found footage form for a terrifying outcome, it’s the human element that is its most malevolent antagonist. The nuns severely punish the women who fall out of line, beating them and chastising them, even when they know they are being filmed. The image of a young pregnant girl, shackled and starved, (despite the fact that for the film’s purpose she is possessed), is not entirely different from what pregnant inhabitants of the laundries were subjected to. Even the birthing scene where she is told to deal with the pain because that is “God’s gift” is exactly the type of verbal humiliation carried out by the nuns of the Irish institutions during a birthing experience.
There is a particular scene within The Devil’s Doorway where the priests beg a doctor to help the young pregnant woman but they are told the nuns will not permit her to leave the laundry to go to hospital, and that the first priority should be the baby, even if that means the mother dies. This resonates with the fact that up until 2018 the law of the state of Ireland dictated that a woman’s life was secondary to that of the child she was carrying.
Both Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother (2021) and Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground (2019) deal explicitly with the folklore legend of the changeling. A fairy child who is swapped in the place of a human child. Whilst also depicting Irish folklore, both of these films explore maternal mental health and how that is viewed by wider society. The lack of importance and understanding placed on maternal mental health and mental illness in general is prominent in You Are Not My Mother, with the representation of protagonist’s Char’s mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) seemingly replaced with a monstrous changeling who puts her daughter in danger. In the film Angela is portrayed as living with a mental illness which causes her to disappear for a time. When she returns, the audience are forced to see through her child’s eyes, as her mother becomes a monster, something to be scared of and a potential threat to her child’s life.
In The Hole in the Ground, the changeling has taken on the traditional child role, and the film centres on a young mother Sarah (Seána Kerslake) who is attempting to come to terms with the fact her son Chris has been kidnapped by the fairy folk and replaced by a monstrous doppelganger. Despite the obvious fictional folklore aspects, within the film is a deeper exploration of how mothers are treated by medical professionals and others during moments of turmoil. Sarah’s fears are dismissed by her doctor; she is gaslighted continuously as her feelings and behaviour are put down to just some “anxiety” due to her past, and pills are given to her. Medical gaslighting is a common occurrence for women in general, in particular mothers, who are often told their concerns are just hormones and/or anxiety, and that they need to get it together for the sake of their children.
A few other films worthy of mentioning are A Dark Song (2016), Citadel (2012), short film Changeling (2021) and even Evil Dead Rise (2023) – which whilst being a Hollywood film, still reflects Lee Cronin’s reckoning as an Irish person towards motherhood.
Ireland’s sordid and not so distant past has given birth to a very distinct type of maternal horror, one that is uniquely Irish. Like most horror films, Ireland’s contributions to horror cinema are layered, providing an insight into the culture and society in which they are set and in which they exist. A society which has allowed and continues to allow the systemic and institutionalised abuse and neglect of its most vulnerable, whether that is in the form of its lack of maternity health services or mental health support structures.
Ireland is haunted and its mother-ghosts are going nowhere.