Director/Screenplay/Producer – Paul Duane, Photography – Conor Rotheram, Music – Ian Lynch, Visual Effects – Simon Wilkinson, Prosthetic Effects – Suzi Battersby/Red Girl FX, Production Design – Ruth Barry. Production Company – Witchman Filnms/1185 Films.
Cast
Suzanne Collins (Anna), Charlie Maher (Aleks), Catherine Siggins (Alice), Nigel O’Neill (Breezeblock Concannon), Olwen Fouere (Rita Concannon), Barry McKiernan (Ron Stowman), Sean Fitzgerald (The Pub Singer), Barry Gleeson (The Old Singer)
Plot
Anna and Aleks are a Dublin couple who are engaged in a form of anthropology where they travel about in an effort to record the oldest known versions of folk songs for the academic expert Agnes. They take a trip out to the village of Crossmaglen in search of Rita Concannon who is rumoured to know songs that predate the Irish language. They are directed to Rita’s place, only to find Agnes already there. Rita will not let them record her but says she will teach the song to Anna, although insists that Aleks go away because the song cannot be taught to a man. Afterwards they find that Agnes has secretly recorded the song. Aleks becomes embroiled in helping Agnes translate the song. He leaves Anna for Agnes, but during the process the song begins to change the two of them. Meanwhile, Rita’s son finds her murdered body and comes to Dublin, abducting Anna in an effort to find Agnes, whom he believes was the killer.
All You Need is Death was the first fiction film from Paul Duane. After emerging as a director in episodes of UK tv series such as Casualty (1986- ), Ballykissangel (1996-2001) and Footballers’ Wives (2002-6), Duane began to specialise in feature-length documentaries with the likes of Barbaric Genius (2011), Very Extremely Dangerous (2012), Natan (2013), What Time is Death? (2019) and Best Before Death (2019). Of particular note is his documentary While You Live, Shine (2018), which seems to have given the inspiration for the film here, depicting a musicologist who is dedicated to charting the music of a Greek island.
I really began to like All You Need is Death as it started. It is a horror film but there is nothing about that feels as though it is following horror formula. It comes with its feet planted in local cultural ritual. I have no idea whether the practice of tracking down folk songs and searching for their earliest variants is a real thing or not but it feels as though it should be. This takes the film well into the Folk Horror genre that has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years, although it does so in unique ways all of its own.
Charlie Maher and Suzanne Collins head in search of folk songs
It is not always clear what is going on – like what exactly the song does or who the being that emerges at the end is, while the plot takes skips as though scenes ended up on the cutting room floor – we hurry from Catherine Siggins announcing she made a copy of the song to she and Charlie Maher collaborating during the course of which he seems to have left Suzanne Collins for her. That said, the film has a sense of intense uncanniness. Mysterious things begin to occur – the imprisoned Barry McKiernan surrounded by black smudges, Catherine Siggins finding she is mysteriously pregnant despite a hysterectomy – and twists in the tale – Suzanne Collins abducted and made prisoner by Nigel O’Neill. Equally the film is constantly hinting at far worse things just beyond our understanding occurring.
In the end, the questions marks and untidily unanswered plot strands leave All You Need is Death not quite satisfying, but the sense of uncanniness that it draws you into, the sense of harkening back to an older, more cryptic horror that lies under cultural ritual is well achieved. It shows Paul Duane as a director/writer of undeniable promise.
