15 Irish Horror Movies To Chill Your Summer

If you read my work on this site, it won’t come as a shock that I’ve been immersing myself in Irish culture lately. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the excellent (and unexpected) benefits is that I recently tore through a bunch of modern Irish horror films, and enjoyed the experience so much that I decided to sum it up in list format.

There were some intriguing similarities between the films. Many of them feature characters who have found themselves in dire financial straits. A lot of the films have people who are to some degree or other vulnerable: Eastern European refugees, blind antique shop owners, amnesiacs fresh from the hospital, “fallen” girls, recovering addicts, grieving lesbians. There are often people with more power standing over them, physically or metaphorically, so in addition to the supernatural horror there’s society to deal with. And the majority of the films are shot through with a rich vein of folk horror that makes my heart SOAR.

I watch a lot of horror. At a certain point you know the tropes, you know the beats, and you can predict a lot of what will happen. The reason I like all of these films (apart from the fact that I’m a sucker for Irish stuff) is that they all went in interesting directions that surprised me. They’re not all good, per se, but they all at least commit to being original and unusual in a way that so many films these days decline to do. Well, except for the first one on the list—I’m doing these in chronological order, and because of that we have to start with…

Gorgo

Gorgo is a 1961 Irish-British co-production about an Irish kaiju awakened by a nuclear test. We know Gorgo is a kaiju because it’s a huge lizard that walks on its hind feet and screams a lot. We know it’s Irish because it’s discovered off the coast of an Irish island—but really because when Mom of Gorgo finds out her beloved son has been kidnapped by the English, she rises from the depths and stomps the FUCK out of London.

Tower Bridge? GONE.

Big Ben? GONE.

The London Underground? (Partially) GONE.

The military tries tanks, bombs, flamethowers, and electrocution, but to no avail—Mom of Gorgo has two other things in common with fellow Irish icon Cillian Murphy: her life was irrevocably changed by the atomic bomb, and there is no fucking way she’s letting her kid develop a British accent.

This is not a good film by any means, but the MST3K version is fun as heck. Mike and the ‘Bots make some excellent deep-cut jokes about Irish culture (they’re right—the real monster is Ian Paisley), and run with the fact that one actor bears a striking resemblance to Samuel Beckett:

You can watch the original or MSTied version for free on Tubi!

Grabbers

An Irish monster movie that works! Depressive alcoholic Garda (the national police of Ireland) Ciarán O’Shea is not terribly happy that he’s been given, essentially, a babysitter to mind him during his boss’ two-week holiday—it’s not like he needs help patrolling the tiny community of Erin Island. He’s even less happy when he meets his new temporary partner: plucky, upbeat, by-the-book Lisa Nolan. But when tentacle-y alien monsters swarm the island, O’Shea and Nolan have to work together to try to keep the community safe… and shitfaced.

Grabbers grabs a couple of stereotypes of Irish culture and wrestles them to the ground with wit and gross-out humor. You see, it turns out that the “Grabbers” are deathly allergic to alcohol, so theoretically as long as the community gets drunk, and stays drunk, they’ll all make it to morning. Between the drunk acting, the improbable action sequences, and the deeply squicky monsters themselves, Grabbers is a fun, lighthearted cult movie that calls back to the glory days of Tremors, C.H.U.D.,  and Gremlins.

The Canal

The logline for the story is that a film archivist learns that terrible things happened in his house a century ago, but the plot is far more complicated. When film archivist David and his very pregnant wife Alice move into a new home, he sees a few shadowy movements in corners, and notices that someone moved the lid off the well in the back garden, but things seem otherwise fine. Five years later, the couple lives in the house with their son, Billy, who is maybe hearing strange noises—but also he’s a tiny child, so it might just be regular old house noises compounded by a child’s imagination. Far more concerning is the fact that Alice seems increasingly distant. Is she thinking of leaving? But then that worry is overshadowed when David finds century-old film footage that implies terrible things were done in their home. When Alice disappears, David falls into a nightmare world. Was she kidnapped? Murdered? Is his house haunted? Did murderous spirits attack Alice, and are they targeting him and his son? Or is he himself her killer, trapped in an ever-evolving fugue state?

While there are times when The Canal is a bit clunky, it worked for me because it follows all of its possibilities in different directions, and finally ends in a way that suggests a whole other story playing out underneath the one you’ve been watching—which you’ll see is a theme with a lot of these films.

Let Us Prey

Let Us Prey is an Irish/Scottish co-production written by Fiona Watson and David Cairns, directed by Brian O’Malley, and starring Liam Cunningham. This is not my usual kind of thing—it’s a revenge movie, and I tend to hate those because I distrust the machine that abuses a vulnerable person in order to produce a catharsis when the abuser is abused in turn.

Having said that: Let Us Prey is so ridiculous, over-the-top, and bloody that I found myself enjoying it anyway. A Mysterious Stranger shows up in a small Scottish town where all three members of the police force and at least a couple civilians are like the worst people who ever lived. The town’s brand new cop, who’s at least trying to be morally OK, is a woman who survived horrific abuse in her childhood. Her past, plus all the crimes committed by the other characters, bubble up to the surface over the course of one violent night when the aforementioned Stranger shows up at the police station. Liam Cunningham gives an excellent deadpan performance as the Stranger, and everyone else is deliciously evil and/or terrified as the evening takes a turn for the Grand Guignol. And then there’s a killer final line that made me hoot with delight…

The Hallow

You know the drill: people who haven’t done nearly enough research move into an old house on the edge of an Ancient Irish Forest; eldritch horrors ensue. This time, it’s a young couple—Adam and Claire—and their adorable, chubby, giggle infant, Finn, who seems to have been designed in a lab to be stolen by fae. Adam is a microbiologist researching which trees should be torn down, which does not endear him to the locals, while Claire decides it’s a swell idea to take all the iron bars off their new house’s outer windows. I’m of two minds on this movie. Having watched a lot of Irish horror for this list, Adam and Claire were so goddamn obtuse it made me root for the eldritch horrors. However, the atmosphere, the gross black slimy roots that grow everywhere and ruin modern tech, and the fantastic creature effects (especially the upsetting make-up work in the last half hour or so) made my horror-loving heart swell with joy—hence The Hallow’s inclusion on the list.

Without Name

Without Name is best described as folk horror meets eco horror. Eric, a cantankerous land surveyor with a rocky home life, is tasked with assessing a remote forest for a property developer. Rather than risk the locals catching wind of the project, the developer rents a remote cottage outside of town, and Eric soon finds the weird writings left behind by the previous tenant. Gradually the writings—and possibly the forest itself?—begin to dig their way into Eric’s sense of reality.  

The forest isn’t exactly on any map, by the way, and it’s called “gan ainm” (gun-eye-num), which means “no name” in Irish. Surely that isn’t important.

Once again a fairly bare bones production is elevated with strong performances and creeeeeepy atmosphere. The forest they use… well, I wouldn’t set foot in it, I can tell you that much. The filmmakers hold on shots of trees, mosses, and fungi so long it begins to feel like a Slow Cinema horror. The only weakness here is that Eric himself is so deep in a midlife doldrum that I didn’t feel I knew him well enough before the horror set in. When he leaves for the trip his son recoils at his attempt to ruffle his hair, his wife barely acknowledges that he’s leaving, obviously he’s having an affair, and of course it’s with his student. More interesting is the hint that he’s stewing on the moral compromise of his surveying work, but it’s never quite in focus enough—the movie becomes so much about how the forest transforms him, I think we needed to see the compromises he’s made throughout his life that made him vulnerable to gan ainm. Having said that, I still think the film is a strong addition to the list—watching the forest dig its roots into everyone is a visceral thrill.

One more warning: the filmmakers use some strobe effects and flashing lights toward the end, so be cautious if those affect you.

The Devil’s Doorway

I tend to like found footage horror, and I also love a big swing. I appreciate a movie that sets a few constraints and tries to see how it can tell a cool story within them, and I love a movie that commits to an idea that some might think is too serious for horror, and proves that horror is the perfect place for humans to deal with their shit.

The Devil’s Doorway is a found footage religious horror period piece set in a haunted Magdalene Laundry—Small Things Like These meets The Exorcist—which sounds like the kind of thing someone would make to lure me into a TRAP. 

In 1960, a pair of priests are sent to a Magdalene Laundry to investigate a possible miracle. (Obviously one is older, embittered, and maybe faithless, and the other is young, exuberant, and sure of his beliefs.) The Bishop has asked the younger priest to record the proceedings, and Father John is extremely excited to capture a miracle on film for the first time. Father Thomas, who’s been investigating miraculous claims for decades, doubts that there will be anything worth filming.

Their investigation soon uncovers far more than the miracle (which, to Father Thomas’ shock, seems to be real) as the film’s writer director, Aislinn Clarke, grabs the central real-life horror of the Magdalene Laundries and wrestles with it through the tropes of demonic possession, creepy ghost children, and conspiracies that go all the way to the top. Elements that could have just been shallow exercises in religious horror are made more visceral by their grounding in real history. Likewise, rather than an academic treatise on misogyny and patriarchy, the film is able to make the reality face-able, in a way, by using the language of horror film. Clarke makes a point of giving us complicit nuns, well-meaning nuns, priests who are actually good people, men who were also hurt by the Laundries… there’s an astonishing amount of nuance and detail wrapped up in something that could have just been a jumpscare machine.

Extra Ordinary

When Extra Ordinary works, it’s the kind of sweet oddball genre-bending comedy that I’d expect to find in an indie theater in early 2000s. I am honor bound to say that there were points where it did not work for me, but overall it was so fun I decided to include it. Rose Dooley (Maeve Higgins) is a driving instructor with a very special talent: she can communicate with ghosts. As a kid, she and her parapsychologist father helped trapped spirits move on. Unfortunately, a botched ceremony led to her dad’s death, and now she’s trying to leave that life behind her—until one of her driving school clients reveals that the ghost of his wife has made life so miserable for his teen daughter that she’s threatened to move out. Can Rose tap into her old talent? If she manages to exorcise Martin’s wife, might there be a future for the two of them?

And see, this part of the movie is fabulous. But there’s another plot, where pop singer Christian Winter plans to sacrifice Martin’s daughter to a demon in order to revive his music career. Mr. Winter is played by Will Forte, his bitchy girlfriend is played by Claudia O’Doherty, and they’re both great and hilarious and everything, but I ended up feeling like two different movies were being Frankensteined together, and while there are lots of sweet and/or hilarious moments, I’m not sure the film as a whole came together for me? I wanted it to be a little sharper, I think. But I want to include it anyway since the parts that work offer a bright counterpoint to the vibe of ANCIENT FOLK HORRORS WILL DOOM US ALL on the rest of this list.

Boys From County Hell

If you saw Sinners, and you want more Irish vampires, why not go back to the source? Boys From County Hell is about a bloodsucking creature called Abhartach, which supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. Like a lot of the movies on this list, it also digs into class issues, family tension, grief, and the way Ireland’s mad dash for development is leaving some of its people behind. And also there is a fucking awesome twist on how vampires feed that I’m not gonna give away.

Boys From County Hell is an interesting case. If you just watch the trailer, it seems like a gory, madcap movie about a band of hapless ne’er-do-wells saving their small town from a vampire. And there is an element of that, sure, but the film is also surprisingly poignant and emotional at points—which I think makes it a better film than the one advertised in the trailer, if maybe a little less “funny”. It treats its characters like real people, which means that when one of them is faced with the vampiric version of their dead best friend, well, they react like a person would actually react in that situation. That dark undercurrent gives the film a depth and tonal rockiness that reminded me very much of American Werewolf in London (a film that’s referenced here) and took it to a higher level than simply silly horror-comedy. And it’s named after a fuckin Pogues song, come on.

Caveat

Isaac has been released from the hospital with pretty bad amnesia. He’s in dire need of funds. His landlord offers him a fairly cushy gig: go to a rural house and hang out with his niece, Olga, so she won’t be in the country alone. Seems OK? But then, as the title suggests, there is fine print. The rural house belonged to the landlord’s brother, who killed himself there after his wife disappeared without a trace. (And no one really looked for the wife when she went missing?) Olga, who occasionally goes into non-communicative dissociative states, keeps going back by herself no matter how many times she’s told to stop. The house is on a remote island. The place is fucking freezing. The electricity is spotty at best. And, oh yeah, because Olga has a horror of being alone with a stranger, Isaac will have to wear this leather/chain harness contraption to restrict his movements in the house.

Olga will have the only key.

This is all before you factor in the sentient haunted Drumming Bunny toy.

Naturally most of the fine print isn’t explained to Isaac until after he’s in the house, on the island, with no way to back out. But even telling you all that has given nothing away, because there are so many delightfully weird twists in this film. Like a lot of the films on this list, it mashes genres together while honoring the tropes of each one, and it’s just FUN. I love Drummer Bunny. Drummer Bunny 4-ever. (And it will be forever cause the fucker’s haunted AF.)

The Cellar

The Cellar starts off as your basic haunted house movie: Mom & Dad (both relentlessly motivated marketing execs), Angry Anarchist Teen Daughter, and Sweet Overlooked Son move into a giant ramshackle house they bought through an auction and didn’t bother to research properly. The fact that the house is named “Xaos House” and was owned by a renowned mathematician who disappeared off the face of the earth is cool, probably.

While this isn’t exactly a good film, what’s fun here is that the movie jumps into the haunted house tropes with both feet. The parents have to pull an all-nighter and leave their kids alone on the first night in the creepy new house. Whatever’s in the titular cellar immediately starts fucking with the kids, like there is no grace period here. It takes the adults a hilariously long time to clock the weird alchemical symbols and literal goat skulls on the walls. What’s even more fun is that the mystery of the house keeps going in new directions, until in the end it takes a turn for the truly, deeply batshit. This is the kind of movie teen sleepovers were made for, and I enjoyed it even after it implied that getting bonked on the head really hard could make a person understand higher mathematics.

Let The Wrong One In

Let The Wrong One In is a ramshackle, extremely current, often joyous vampire comedy. It’s a bit like Shaun of the Dead Goes To Dublin But It’s Vampires Instead of Zombies—but where Shaun was a sharp satire on zombie lore, Let The Wrong One In gradually dispenses with easy vampire jokes to focus on the family that now has a bloodsucking member. Matt (Karl Rice) has always been the steady, responsible one compared to his big brother Deco (Eoin Duffy), and their Ma (Hilda Fay) finally cut Deco off after years of addiction and relapses wreaked havoc on the family. But when Deco turns up with a bite on his neck and an allergy to garlic chips, Matt feels he has no choice but to try and help. This is complicated somewhat by the vampiric hen party that’s rampaging through town, turning Dublin one neck at a time.

Of all the horror-comedies on this list, I think this is the one that made me laugh the most and the hardest, but even here, there ends up being an undercurrent of real emotion as Matt and Deco work through the years of mistrust and resentment, evade a vampire hunter, and deal with Deco’s girlfriend Natalie, all while making sure Ma doesn’t find out about ANY of it. Yes, Anthony Head is here as a vampire hunter, but the movie doesn’t just coast on Buffy references. There’s a running gag that the sunlight in Ireland is so weak the vampires can go out with umbrellas. There’s a joke about the Dublin housing crisis. There’s a stake-wielding montage. The flying effects are fucking hilarious, the performances are all perfect, and there’s an end-of-movie callback that made me applaud. Overall, while this one isn’t an instant classic like Shaun of the Dead, it’s a really fun take on modern vampirism—and sibling relationships that get complicated whether people are undead or not.

Oddity

Oddity might be one of my all-time favorite movies now?

Carolyn Bracken plays a dual role as Dani Odello-Timmis and her blind, psychic twin sister, Darcy Odello. The majority of the film takes place after Dani’s murder, when Darcy sets about hunting down and wreaking occult vengeance upon her sister’s killers.

I don’t want to say too much here. This is Damian Mc Carthy’s follow up to his feature film debut, Caveat, and it’s every bit as surprising and delightful as the first film—as well as being more purely horror. Once again he and his team kill it with the setting, confining all the action to either a huge, shadowy house in the country (the site of Dani’s murder) or the washed out, green fluorescent-lit mental hospital where Dani’s husband works, or the hospital’s opposite: Darcy’s warm, cluttered oddity shop. The human element is horrific, there are a couple of different types of supernatural stuff at play, excellent jumpscares, and a lovely thread of dark folk weirdness. I mentioned that Darcy was psychic, but the particular way she’s psychic is that if she holds someone’s personal belongings—a wedding ring, a watch, the more intimate contact the better—she can learn a lot about the person’s mind and actions. When she manages to get the glass eye that belonged to the man she thought killed her sister, it sends her on a journey to learn the truth and make sure the right people pay. And, spoiler alert, they sure fucking do. It’s rare that the last shot of a horror film makes me cheer, but this one does.

All You Need is Death

All You Need is Death is a fascinating movie, and I’ve written a full review of it here—this is the movie that kicked me down the whole (sentient, haunted) rabbithole of Irish horror that led to this list.

Animated by a score from Ian Lynch of the doom folk group Lankum, it follows a young couple who descend into the shadowy underworld of trading and selling traditional acapella folk songs. (Look, it makes sense in the movie.) They encounter an ancient, pre-Christian, Old Irish folk song, which is so old it doesn’t even have a title—but if it did, it would roughly translate to “Love is a knife with a blade for a handle”, which should give you a pretty clear picture of how this movie goes. It can never be heard by men, and extra never be recorded, so guess what happens.

The fun of All You Need is Death is that the film takes the obvious plot point and takes it in bold and original directions, turning a man who at first seems like a villain into the most sympathetic character in the film, creating a horrifying atmosphere on the power of the actors’ performances and a few well-deployed practical effects, and finally going for an audacious ending that opens into a whole new story.

I rarely want a sequel to a horror movie, but I want All 2 Need Is Death like, today.

Fréwaka  

Fréwaka  won my heart with its logline, which is: “A nursing student is sent to a remote village to care for an agoraphobic woman, who fears sinister folkloric entities she believes abducted her decades before.”

But please understand that that is only the barest bone description of this film. This is the second feature from The Devil’s Doorway director Aislinn Clarke, and like that film, Fréwaka (a simplification of the Irish “fréamhacha” or “roots”—but “roots” in a symbolic and spiritual way, as well as the physical roots of a plant) digs its fingers into the knots of Irish women’s trauma. When Siubhán, called “Shoo” by her friends (played, in a gorgeously raw performance, by Clare Monnelly) travels to the West to tend to elderly stroke survivor Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), she’s just suffered a traumatic loss, and she only takes the assignment because her fiancée, Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya), is enormously pregnant, and they need the money.

As Shoo gets to know Peig, she learns the older woman “had to” get married, while other folks in the town seem to think there was a stay in a Magdalene Laundry in her past. For her part, Shoo gradually reveals the depth of physical and spiritual abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother. The two women try to process their pasts together, which sounds heavy, but Clarke handles it all with a deft touch and occasional bursts of humor to create a movie that’s lighter and more sardonic than The Devil’s Doorway. Clarke plays with horror tropes—ramshackle creaking house, creepy elders who know more than they let on, spotty technology—and a cathedral’s worth of emotionally fraught religious kitsch. And then, of course, the folkloric elements rear their terrifying, antlered and/or rhymer-masked heads, revealing an older, darker reality that has no interest in Peig’s generation’s reliance on new-fangled Christianity, much less Shoo’s belief in the modern world.

On top of all that, Fréwaka is almost entirely in Irish (I understood a little bit aaahhhh!) AND it makes excellent use of the Horslips’ Celtic rock classic “Dearg Doom”