Digging up the past is dirty business. Northern Irish indie The Dig, the first feature from brothers Andy and Ryan Tohill, brings viewers out to the bog, for a grubby, mucky, effective drama of guilt and redemption. Written by Stuart Drennan and assisted by NI Screen, the film stars Moe Dunford as Ronan Callahan, a convicted murderer with a memory problem who returns to his small Irish village and finds the father of his apparent victim (Lorcan Cranitch) on an obsessive quest to unearth his daughter’s body. Flagged by Emily Taafe as the victim’s sister, and Francis Magee as a menacing Sergeant, the repentant Ronan picks…
-
-
The Irish bog is fertile metaphorical soil. It’s dank, ancient, unforgiving. It brings you down and sucks you in and swallows you up. It is our countryside version of Jordan Peele’s sunken place. In The Dig, filmed in soggy Northern Irish landscapes, the bog represents obsession, or death, or the past; ideal terrain for a moody murder-mystery drama drenched in male guilt. Written by Stuart Drennan, whose 2014 film Breaker also turned on questions of memory and buried secrets, and marking the feature directorial debut of Belfast-born brothers Andy and Ryan Tohill, The Dig gets much out of its basic premise…