A quick search for Irish horror films yields recent films like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Little Stranger. And fine films they may be, but they are categorised as Irish due to the presence of the Irish actors; Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan in the first instance and Domhnall Gleeson in the latter. While both of those films are respectably creepy choices (Sacred Deer is particularly uncomfortable watching), the list below contains some lesser-known Irish horror films set in Ireland with a predominantly Irish cast and crew. There are plenty of other great ones out there, but here…
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“Will you watch this film with me? I’m scared to watch it alone,” begs the grieving and quite possibly insane father at the centre of Dublin-set The Canal. Film watching is a risky business in Irish film-maker Ivan Kavanagh’s broadly familiar but effective combination of domestic dread, malignant spirits and dysfunctional paterfamilias. We open on a slice of yuppie fantasy, with film archivist David (Rupert Evans) and his beautiful pregnant wife Alice (Hannah Hoekstra) meeting an estate agent and cheerfully joyfully agreeing on a lovely townhouse for their burgeoning family unit, a buzzing middle-class aspiration that goes sour. Horror continues…