PREPARE yourself for a Halloween fright this Thursday with an Irish language feature opening this year’s Belfast Film Festival.
Written and directed by Belfast-based filmmaker Aislinn Clarke, Fréwaka is an unsettling tale that is steeped in the horror genre and will lure you in from the outset, while snaring you – much like the characters – to your inevitable fate.
From the outset you’ll be unnerved by this disturbing story, while trying to work out just what does lurk beneath a country pile in rural Ireland.
Haunted by the tragic death of her abusive and estranged mother, care worker Shoo (Clare Monnelly) gladly leaves her pregnant partner behind to tie up the loose ends at the dead woman’s home, while she takes up a posting at a remote village to care for Péig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who fears the outside world – a consequence from her abduction on her wedding night some fifty years before. As the two women develop a strangely deep connection, Shoo is consumed by the old woman’s paranoia, rituals and superstitions, eventually leading her to confront the horrors from her own past.
The movie is populated by female characters. Marriages, births and deaths are the work of women, Péig tells Shoo. Worryingly, all three have become part of Shoo’s recent life, much to Péig's dread.
The claustrophobic surrounds of the house that the two women are sharing leads to suspicion and mistrust, and by extension the eerily quiet and depopulated village brings a deep foreboding which hangs over proceedings and is difficult to shake off.
Writer-director Aislinn Clarke
There are outstanding performances by Monnelly and Ní Neachtain and the storyline and cinematography will leave you disturbed and fearful for the fate of the two main protagonists.
Fréwaka is Aislinn Clarke’s second horror feature. It is produced by Dermot Lavery of DoubleBand Films and Patrick O’Neill of Wildcard and was made under the CINE4 feature film initiative with the financial support of TG4, Screen Ireland and Coimisiún na Meán.
Tickets for Fréwaka at Cineworld in Belfast are on sale at https://belfastfilmfestival.org/
