Dead Meat (2004)
Nov 13, 2005Irish Zombie Film
An enthusiastic Irish-made copy of the George Romero zombie film that vies between the amateurish and occasional moments of interest
Bord Scannan na hEireann (The Irish Film Board)
Boy Eats Girl (2005)
Mar 30, 2015Zombie Film
One of wittiest titles of the 2000s zombie revival fad – the suggestion of a high school love story gone really wrong. This actual film is a surprisingly ordinary and unexceptional effort
The Tiger’s Tail (2006)
May 10, 2009Doppelganger Film
John Boorman makes a film where Brendan Gleeson has his life taken over by a doppelganger
Shrooms (2007)
Jul 11, 2023Drug Hallucinations/Backwoods Horror
A party go searching for magic mushrooms in rural Ireland. In between assorted drug hallucinations, someone or thing begins slaughtering the group
The Escapist (2008)
Jun 8, 2016Prison Escape Drama/Fantastic Twist
This is principally a prison escape drama, at which it works well with a strong ensemble cast. It also has a left field ending that reveals it is a fantasy film, which remains its least satisfying aspect
The Secret of Kells (2009)
Mar 23, 2015Animation/Celtic History and Mythology
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
Ondine (2009)
Jun 19, 2010Man Fishes Up a Selkie
Neil Jordan directs a beautifully earthy Irish fairytale in which Colin Farrell fishes up a possible selkie woman
The Eclipse (2009)
Jul 4, 2010Irish Ghost Story
Not to be confused with the Twilight sequel, this is a quiet, modestly made Irish ghost story set around a literary festival where the strongest parts are the characters and performances
Outcast (2010)
Dec 29, 2012Dark Sorceries
Absolutely fascinating Irish-Scottish film about people hunting each other with arcane sorceries on a rundown Edinburgh council estate … Compulsively fascinating in its often enigmatic approach, while depicting magic on screen in a way unlike anything we have seen before
Perfect Sense (2011)
May 26, 2014World Where People Start Losing Their Sensory Perceptions
Remarkable film set in a world where people start to progressively lose each of their senses. Much of the film works as a character drama rather than a catastrophe film but its portrait of how the world tries to cope in the aftermath of the loss of another sense makes for top-notch science-fiction
Wake Wood (2011)
Aug 7, 2011Resurrection of the Dead
Another entry from the revived Hammer Films, an intelligent and effective variant on Pet Semetary that manages to delve into some dark and chilling places
The Moth Diaries (2011)
May 20, 2012Possible Vampire in a Girl's Boarding School
Interesting attempt to rewrite Carmilla for the Twilight crowd. In fact, this is a film that features more credible teenage girls and is far more successful as a horror film and at creating uncanny mood than the Twilight films were
Citadel (2012)
May 7, 2013Mutant Children of the Housing Projects
Irish-British production that depicts the social housing estates of Glasgow as a desolate netherworld inhabited by mutant children. Undeniably effective but the depiction of children of urban ghettos requires you to tune out any liberal instincts
The Last Days on Mars (2013)
Apr 13, 2014Expedition to Mars/Alien Zombie Infection
This starts out offering a fine astrophysically credible depiction of Mars only to quickly reach for the playbook of Alien cliches to essentially become Zombies on Mars. As long as one accepts the hackneyed premise for what it is, the film generates more than reasonable tension
Let Us Prey (2014)
Aug 17, 2015Mysterious Stranger/Supernatural Retribution
Rather effective effort about a Mysterious Stranger who is locked in a cell and proceeds to expose the dark secrets of everybody around him … A film that digs darkly and comes with a real fire and brimstone judgementalism before reaching a completely whacked ending
Song of the Sea (2014)
Mar 28, 2015Animation/Selkies and Celtic Mythology
An Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film – a unique and exquisitely drawn dive into Celtic mythology that comes with wit, humour and the emotional tenderness of a Hayao Miyazaki. This deserves to be seen far more widely than it ended up being
Cherry Tree (2015)
Oct 10, 2017Devil Worship and Pregnancy
From David Keating who made Wake Wood, this falls into the Folk Horror genre and becomes a well-made variant on Rosemary's Baby as a schoolgirl accepts a Devil's Deal to save her father
The Visit: An Alien Encounter (2015)
Oct 2, 2015First Encounter Between Human and Alien Speculative Documentary
Absolutely fascinating documentary that speculates what the likely reactions would be if aliens were to arrive on Earth where we get input from various scientists and UN spokespeople. The answers are compelling and completely different from anything that you usually get in SF cinema
Holidays (2016)
Aug 7, 2016Horror Anthology
Another in the spate of horror anthologies from various directors with each episode here being set around a holiday. As with these films, some of the episodes work well, some end with a puzzled WTF and most somewhere in between
I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)
Nov 6, 2016Teenage Serial Killer vs Shapechanging Monster
Unique and quite remarkable film about a teen in a nowhere town who recognises the traits of a serial killer in himself and then discovers that aging neighbour Christopher Lloyd is actually a shapechanging monster. Starts out as a slowburner but eventually develops considerable tension
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Mar 5, 2018Charles Dickens and the Writing of A Christmas Carol
Among the fad for biopics about writers and the origins of famous stories, this, about Charles Dickens and the creation of A Christmas Carol, is the most lunatic – and that's not counting the blatant lie of the title
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Dec 31, 2017Curse Placed on a Man's Family
Yorgos Lanthimos specialises in a bizarrely deadpan black humour. This works rather well as he make a horror film in which surgeon Colin Farrell finds a strange malady has afflicted his family unless he kills one of them in sacrifice
Muse (2017)
May 18, 2018Man Haunted by Supernatural Muses
Jaume Balaguero has become one of the most promising of modern Spanish genre directors, principally on the basis of the [Rec] films. However, this supernatural mystery that resembles one of Dario Argento's Three Mothers films fails to quite come together
The Cured (2017)
Oct 7, 2018In the Aftermath of a Cure for the Zombie Apocalypse
The zombie genre has become creatively exhausted. This is one of the most original takes yet that asks what would happen if a cure were found but the zombies returned to life with full memory of everything they had done
Mary Shelley (2017)
Nov 9, 2018Frankenstein’s Author Biopic
Biopic of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. This is a women-written and directed work so the film places an interesting feminist slant on her story meaning that she wrote the book less to address themes about science and hubris than because she was in an unhappy marriage
The Lodgers (2017)
Mar 30, 2018Irish Ghost Story
From Irish director Brian O'Malley who made the fine Let Us Prey, this is a beautifully shot period set ghost story that does a superb job in building atmosphere. The huge but is that it is all fascinating mystery but ends without explaining a single that has happened
The Little Stranger (2018)
Apr 6, 2020Ghost Story
Lenny Abrahamson, who made the amazing Room, adapts a ghost story from Sarah Waters, an author who usually specialises in literary Victorian lesbian bodice rippers. The ghost story is an overmined genre of late but this is a not uninteresting venture into the field.
The Hole in the Ground (2019)
May 2, 2021Child Turns Evil
Irish film that creates quite a reasonable degree of atmosphere in its story of a mother who believes her son has been replaced by something else