‘Fréwaka’ London Film Fest 2024 Review: A Chilling Irish-Language Horror
Ireland’s ancient and contemporary history has seen it emerge as a wellspring of supernatural and sociopolitical horror in recent years. Paul Duane’s All You Need is Death and Damian McCarthy’s Oddity have done much to stoke the flames of Irish genre filmmaking in 2024 alone. Like those pictures, Aislinn Clarke’s sophomore feature, Fréwaka, is steeped in Irish history and has atmosphere to burn. While the film doesn’t always strike the right balance between its gothic, folkloric, and social-realist elements, its grim imagery, fierce score, and astute arrangement of familiar tropes put it up there with the country’s best.
Fréwaka opens in 1973 (an auspicious year for folk horror). A rural wedding is in full swing when a group of uninvited guests wearing sackcloth masks begin to sour the mood. Before long the bride goes missing, leaving naught but her confused husband and Claddagh ring behind.
Also Read: ‘BA’ Screamfest Review: A Flawed but Poignant Film
In present-day Dublin, a train rattles the walls of a dark apartment where religious iconography looms large. Between the garish glow-in-the-dark statuette of the Blessed Virgin and the electric buzz of a beaming red crucifix, Catholicism seems to have an outsized influence here. Things look bleak even before the flat’s inhabitant slips a rope around her neck. It will be a while before she’s found – long enough for the rope to break and her body to begin melting into the carpet.
It’s down to the woman’s daughter, Siúbhán (or Shoo to her friends), to pick up the pieces. Maternal abuse, however, has left Shoo (Clare Monnelly), a palliative care nurse, indifferent about the prospect of sifting through her mum’s old clothes and curios. So when she’s offered an assignment far from the capital, she accepts without hesitation. Shoo will do anything to escape the shadow hanging over her, even if it means leaving pregnant partner Mila at home to scrub the flesh from the floor.
Also Read: ‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’ Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: A Fascinating But Repetitive Look At The Horrors of Aging
When Shoo finally meets her charge, she might wish she hadn’t bothered. Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) doesn’t care much for outsiders and is as frail as she is hostile. Her home is no more welcoming. The old dark house is brimming with bad omens and ragged taxidermy, and its cellar door, a blood-red gateway ringed in rusting totems, seems to be keeping something at bay. It’s in everyone’s best interests that it remains closed.
Fréwaka is stacked with horror conventions: the spooky house and its kooky resident, photographs with scratched-out faces, horned figures that lurk in the shadows, and the blurring of characters’ realities and their paranoid delusions. Where Clarke excels is imbuing these routine traits with localized, dagger-point specificity.
Also Read: ‘The Girl with the Needle’ Makes Light of A Dark, Dank True Story [Beyond Fest 2024 Review]
Run by Catholic orders and supported by the state, the Magdalene laundries were self-supporting asylums for so-called “fallen women” (read: sex workers, rape victims, orphans, and non-conformists). Between the 18th and late 20th centuries, tens of thousands of women were confined and abused in such institutions. Many died and were buried en masse in unmarked graves. Clarke touched upon this horrific chapter of Irish history in her debut feature, 2018’s The Devil’s Doorway. The laundries’ legacy haunts the fringes of Fréwaka, too. The film’s title is derived from the Gaeilge word fréamhacha, meaning “roots”. Shoo learns that she can’t escape hers. And as she and Peig spend time together, it becomes clear that they have more in common than just their scars and prescriptions.
When Fréwaka drinks too deeply from The Wicker Man’s well during its third act, the writer-director’s grounded and distinctive themes give way to something more general and vaguely defined. Until then, though, the film is thick with portent, and its script is packed with deliciously creepy cues. Not all of them are properly expounded upon but those that are will stick with you. Clarke has proved once again that she can arrange well-worn ideas in effective and chilling new ways.
Summary
Packed with plenty of scares, Aislinn Clarke’s latest film takes well-worn folk horror tropes and makes them feel unique.
Categorized:Reviews
