Dir. David Keating, Ireland/UK, 2011, 90 mins
Cast: Eva Birthistle, Aidan Gillen, Timothy Spall
Review by Carol Allen
This Hammer house of horror product for the 21st Century has developed a bit from the costume drama vampires and ghouls threatening bosomy young ladies, which were the Hammer trade mark years ago. What it does have in common with its ancestor however is that it’s an entertaining load of old hokum involving a fresh corpse, strange rituals, graves and raising the dead – in a slightly more high tech way though than in days of yore, in that the participants use heavy duty farm machinery to haul the dead out of the grave. The film also uses gore at every opportunity but for these days with some restraint rather than by the bucketful. On the whole we don’t see too much detail of the often bizarre goings on, which is just as well for those of a delicate disposition, as one of our common obsessions the film plays on is of someone harming animals, in this case a ram and the pony. More important to the story though is another tried and trusted major fear, that of someone we know and love, particularly a child, being revealed as evil.
Gillen and Birthistle play Patrick and Louise, a couple who are grieving for their small daughter Alice, who has been killed in a terrible accident. Hoping to make a fresh start they relocate to an Irish country village and through Patrick’s new boss, the local vet (Spall), discover a strange ritual there, which allows you to get your beloved dead person back for three days only to say goodbye, after which they must return to the beyond. Other caveats on this pact are that the couple can never leave the village ever again and the dead person must have been dead for less than a year. Guess what – they break every rule in the book and here comes trouble. At first everything is lovely in this reunited family, but when Patrick and Louise try to escape the village in order to keep little Alice with them forever, she goes all strange and starts behaving in a very evil way.
Director Keating has cast actors who all have a strong drama background and do their stuff well and he also sets the story up very effectively in terms of the little girl’s death in a way that is gory and horrific but doesn’t wallow in the detail. He’s also directed the whole film very efficiently with enough unexpected shocks to make the audience jump. The story keeps us intrigued and there are certain echoes of The Wicker Man in this strange country custom, though without the sexual element. Gillan and Birthistle make their characters convincing, Spall has some fun as the leader of the “raise the dead” gang, while nine year old Ella Connolly as Alice manages to be both sweet and scary. The resolution of the film is unbelievably silly but so what. This isn’t trying to be Shakespeare, just traditionally scary entertainment.
