The feverish fearlessness of An Taibhse

Director: John Farrelly Starring: Livvy Hill, Tom Kerrisk, Anthony Murphy Running Time: 92 minutes


“Ná bíodh eagla” is the advice whispered to Máire in the darkness and despair of John Farrelly’s An Taibhse, ‘don’t be afraid’, easier said than done when hardships and horrors are so heavily on you. Billed as the first horror feature film entirely in Irish, the film puts its banríon na screadaíl through an impressively dreadful ringer, Farrelly and co telling a story of traumas both personal and national with both a skill for crafting scares and a thoughtful consideration of the bigger picture.

Taking place during the aftermath of the Famine, the film sees Máire and her father Éamon, all that’s left of their family, taking care of a remote Georgian mansion during a harsh winter, Overlook by way of plantation. Máire already has a history of being haunted by a spirit her father firmly denies the existence of, she misses her mother and gets no solace from the monotonous, gruelling subservience to the absent owners of the home they’re trapped in. Éamon has the eagerly insistent excitement about a fresh start so often found in doomed horror protagonists. Amidst the silence and denial, it’s not long before Máire is haunted once again.

Empty and alienating, the filmmakers have a gem of a location in their haunted house, the perfect venue for chokingly tight close ups of tense meals, long uninvitingly hallways the better to run in terror through. As Éamon erratically covers the yard in crosses, as Máire discovers more of the house’s depths, it takes on an impressively unsettling space. With An Taibhse being an intrepidly independent production, there are challenges in transforming it fully into the mid-1800s. The skill from Farrelly and his actors in creating a dreadful atmosphere do distract from those budget constraints for the most part.

Livvy Hill as Máire is particularly impressive, bringing an intensity to her terror that remains rare even from the best of Irish horror. With her character completely alone, abused and retraumatised all at the height of adolescence, Hill walks the fine line of the best horror leads, bringing us into her fright, taking on a helplessness while still moving the story forward. Tom Kerrisk takes to the meaty role of Éamon, a desperate descent into madness, without hesitation. As the film builds to a climax it takes harder swings thematically and stylistically, in which their performances pay off, tying the ghost story together into deeper themes of abuse and abandonment as they both go for broke in a disturbing, unrelenting ending.

The use of the Irish language has a similarly in-story resonance to Tomás Ó Súilleabháin’s Arracht, the use of English as absent and above as the colonisers who put the language there. The Famine setting furthers the trapped nature of this doomed father-daughter dynamic – the horrors we already know they’ve endured leave them as isolated as any snowed-in landscape.

Like many first-time features there are hiccups in executing every idea, but the ambition and audacity are the most impressive aspects of Farrelly’s direction, particularly in that climax, which will leave audiences speechless, the film’s most frightening and intense moments saved for the last. There’s a blazing fury to it that accentuates the film’s themes, and cuts through the shaggier aspects of the screenwriting. If Farrelly can maintain that level of emotional clarity he has a promising career ahead.

Though the story is familiar, the execution is ambitious, the scares are plentiful and the filmmaking is impressive. With An Taibhse capturing attention across the festival circuit, the film has a worthy place in the history of the rapid development of films in Irish, expanding to genre storytelling with a feverish fearlessness.

3.5 out of 5 stars (3.5 / 5)

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