The Irish New Wave Of Horror: 17 Films At The Forefront Of The Irish Horror Invasion

With Damien McCarthy's Oddity scaring the pants off audiences in 2024 with its bizarre occult wooden golem, it would be remiss not to revisit the Irish director's feature-length debut that originally showcased the filmmaker's ability to really put the willies up viewers using a seemingly inanimate object.

Caveat stars Johnny French as Isaac, a drifter suffering from partial amnesia, who has taken a job in an old house on a remote Irish island that entails looking after the owner's niece Olga, who has bouts of catatonic states. After arriving on the island, Isaac discovers that to do his job, he must be attached to a harness and chain at all times, and he soon begins to learn that this old dwelling may be hiding something more sinister in its foundations. Jarring and deeply creepy, Caveat will have you looking twice at any sort of mechanical wind-up soft toy. 

The first Irish feature-length film in over fifty years at the time of its release, The Outcasts is a precursor to what is now celebrated as Irish Folk Horror. Directed and written by the screenwriter of Blood On Satan's Claw, Robert Wynne-Simmons, The Outcasts stars Mary Ryan as Maura, a woman labeled as “mad” amongst her community and accused of being a witch.

After befriending a shaman, who is also an outcast fairy, she soon learns the true nature of her inherent power. Sparking the revival of the Irish film industry in the 1980s, The Outcasts combined both the realism of Irish poverty pre-famine as well as the folklore and mysticism the country is infamous for. 

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Starring Brendan Gleeson, this Irish language short horror is a disturbing examination of why train etiquette may be of the utmost importance. Cáca Milis (the Irish for sweet cake) portrays a woman (Charlotte Bradley) hoping to get into reading her erotic novel as she takes a short train journey after dropping her mother off with a care worker.

When a visually impaired, asthmatic man (Gleeson) interrupts her peace, the woman becomes increasingly annoyed and ends up going to unhinged lengths to preserve her quiet. Used in the Irish education system for its secondary school students' examinations, Cáca Milis has been disturbing generations of young Irish people for over two decades.

Combining aquatic horror and science fiction is Neasa Hardiman's Sea Fever, a claustrophobic terror set on a small Irish fishing trawler. When university student Siobhán purchases her place on the boat to examine deep sea fauna, she and the rest of the crew are taken into an exclusion zone where they discover a strange creature under the water.

Unbeknownst to them and through a series of accidents, a powerful parasite has joined the crew onboard the ship, and one by one they become infected. Starring Irish horror stalwart Olwen Fouéré, Sea Fever is a wet love letter to paranoia-soaked horrors such as The Thing and Alien.

The director of Irish found footage horror The Devil's Doorway, Aislinn Clarke, is flying the flag for the utilization of the Irish language in horror with her second directorial feature, Fréwaka. A phonetic version of the Irish word Fréamhaca, which means ‘roots‘, Fréwaka depicts a care worker from Dublin tasked to provide live-in nursing to an elderly stroke victim.

Combining traditional Irish folklore with the horror of intergenerational trauma and dark Irish history, Clarke continues to champion Irish storytelling and its culture through the genre of horror cinema.

The first horror feature from documentary filmmaker Paul Duane, All You Need Is Death is a chilling examination of Ireland's song traditions. Featuring music from Irish folk musician Ian Lynch of the group Lankum, All You Need Is Death stars Simone Collins and Charlie Maher as a couple who travel around Ireland, gathering forgotten or lost songs.

After coming into contact with a woman (played by Olwen Fouéré) who is the only person who knows a song sung in a language that predates Irish, Anna (Simone Collins) accidentally unleashes an ancient curse. 

Joining Fréwaka in bringing Gaeilge (the Irish language) to the forefront of horror cinema is John Farrelly's famine set, An Taibhse. With its title meaning ‘The Ghost,' An Taibhse centers around father and daughter duo Éamon (Tom Kerrisk) and Máire (Livvy Hill) as they take up residence in a country estate as caretakers while the owners are away for the winter.

When Éamon injures himself, Máire must take up all of the household duties whilst not only dealing with her father's increasingly erratic behavior spurred by alcohol, but she must also contend with a seemingly malevolent supernatural force making itself known to her. 

Ivan Kavanagh's Dublin-set haunted horror The Canal follows film archivist David (played by Rupert Evans) as he begins to research a horrific 100-year-old murder that happens to have taken place in his current abode.

When his adulterous wife and mother to his son Alice (Hannah Hoekstra) goes missing one evening, David becomes increasingly obsessed with his belief that he may be able to capture ghosts in his house. Also starring Steve Oram as Detective McNamara, The Canal is a psychological twist on the traditional haunted house horror. 

Set during one of Ireland's darkest and most atrocious time periods, The Devil's Doorway is one of the kickstarters for the Irish New Wave of Horror. Two Catholic priests (Lalor Roddy and Ciaran Flynn) are sent to a Magdalene Laundry to investigate a potential miracle.

While there, they soon discover the nuns, particularly the sinister Mother Superior (Helena Bereen), are hiding all sorts of evil behind the laundry doors. This chilling found footage style horror aims to terrify audiences not just with its supernatural scares but also in its depiction of the real-life horrors of the Magdalene Laundries and the tyranny of the Catholic Church towards women and children.

As with most horror traditions, The Devil's Doorway holds a mirror up to the society in which it was born and reflects the atrocities that still haunt modern-day Ireland, a country that still suffers from the intergenerational trauma of its recent history.

Starring Seána Kerslake as a mother who, after relocating herself and her son to rural Ireland, begins to suspect her child has been swapped for a malevolent creature of supernatural origins. Based on the Irish folklore of a fairy child changeling, The Hole In The Ground is an uncanny exploration of parental mental illness and psychosis.

As well as being rooted in the Irish lore of the mischievous faeries, the film is also influenced heavily by the traditional Irish children's folk song “Weile Waile” which narrates the story of a woman who takes her child down to the river and murders them with a penknife.

Much like its grim and morbid influences, The Hole In The Ground is bleak and somber and was one of the initial Irish horrors to gain international recognition and acclaim, so much so that director Lee Cronin was at the helm for 2023's Evil Dead Rise.

Putting an Irish spin on vampire lore, Boys From County Hell is a horror-comedy set in a fictional rural town where a local son and father must put aside their tumultuous relationship and save the inhabitants of Six Mile Hill from an ancient vampire who has recently risen, exceedingly hungry, from his prehistoric tomb.

Based on the Irish legend of Abhartach, a neamh-mairbh, or walking dead, who rises from the grave to drink blood before being slain by the local chieftain Cathain with a sword made of the yew tree.

Boys From County Hell is firmly rooted in Ireland, not only with its basis on Irish mythology but also the film's comedy aspect being charmingly and quintessentially Irish as well.

In her feature-length debut, Kate Dolan's You Are Not My Mother is a tense folk horror set in inner-city urban Dublin. Char (Hazel Doupe) is struggling to come to terms with her mother's mental illness as well as balancing a fraught school life.

When her mother (Carolyn Bracken) returns after having gone missing, Char begins to realize the person who reappeared may not be her mother at all. Steeped in Irish culture and the belief system of the Aos Sí (a supernatural race akin to faeries), You Are Not My Mother perfectly portrays the customs and traditions that the people of Ireland still implement in their everyday lives.

Deeply terrifying and horrifically suffocating at times, You Are Not My Mother is a tour de force in the modern folk horror subgenre. (Check out our Convo X Fango with director Kate Dolan and star Hazel Doupe)

Primarily set in one location, Bring Out The Fear is continuing the trend of woodland horror that has seen a rise in popularity within the horror genre. As Rosie (Ciara Bailey) and Dan (Tad Morai) hike through the forest, they begin to realize they want very different outcomes to their current relationship.

Dan wants to get married while Rosie wants to break up, and as their walk progresses, they soon come to the awareness that it's not just their relationship that is doomed. Dizzying and tinged with slight surrealism, Bring Out The Fear depicts the very real nightmare that can come from toxic relationships haunted by addiction and deception.

Short horror Changeling comes from the duo behind Je Suis Le Cat Productions and depicts a new family during the Great Irish Famine in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is a terrifying portrayal of how the beliefs in the supernatural were often a facade for serious postpartum depression and psychosis.

Bleak and morbidly grim, Changeling is loosely influenced by the true story of Bridget Cleary, a woman who was murdered and set alight by her husband due to his insistence that a changeling had replaced her.

Encompassing one of the darkest periods of Irish history with possibly the gravest act that could be committed on screen, Changeling is a small but effective dose of horror.

Another entry into the Irish vampire comedy genre, Let The Wrong One In, situates itself in inner-city Dublin, depicting the strained relationship between brothers Matt (Karl Rice) and Deco (Eoin Duffy). Matt is the long-suffering younger brother of drug addict Deco, who appears at his house one morning, having been bitten by a vampire.

Matt must prevent his brother from giving in to his vampire instincts as well as fighting against a hoard of vampires hellbent on turning the whole city into bloodsucking creatures.

Also starring vampire stalwart Anthony Head (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) as a vampire hunter with a penchant for trains, Let The Wrong One In is an interesting combination of The Lost Boys (1987) and Irish buddy film Adam And Paul (2004). It is a humorous yet heartfelt reflection of the damage drug addiction can cause to families and society as a whole.

Northern Irish horror Mandrake tells the story of empathetic probation officer Cathy (Deirdre Mullins) as she takes on the case of local murder legend ‘Bloody' Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty) as she is released from her prison term for brutally murdering her abusive husband.

With its brutal depiction of natural and raw maternal instincts, the film pits two mothers against each other, both hellbent on protecting their two vulnerable sons. Interlaced with witchcraft and occultism, the film is based on the lore of the mandrake root, with its fertility healing powers, it encompasses the tradition of the Irish healer woman and her place within society.

Satanically sinister, The Cellar stars Elisha Cuthbert as Keira Woods, who, after moving her family into a rural estate house, begins to suspect the cellar hides some serious secrets after her daughter disappears.

As she begins to unfold the mystery that envelopes the dwelling, Keira must face the darkness or risk the possibility of losing her family forever. Marrying the usually opposing forces of science and faith, The Cellar is part occultist terror and part Lovecraftian otherworldly horror.

The Cellar plays on the fears of eternal damnation of souls and mind-boggling mathematical equations. (Check out our SXSW interview with Brendan Muldowney, Elisha Cuthbert and Eoin Macken.)