All You Need Is Death movie review (2024) | Little White Lies

All You Need Is Death review – a mem­o­rable fic­tion debut

16 Apr 2024 / Released: 19 Apr 2024

Shadowy, ghostly apparition with hollow eyes and an unsettling expression against a dark background.
Shadowy, ghostly apparition with hollow eyes and an unsettling expression against a dark background.
4

Anticipation.

Big fans of Duane’s doc work, especially 2011’s Barbaric Genius.

4

Enjoyment.

You can tell that everyone involved in the making really understood and appreciated the assignment.

3

In Retrospect.

Doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it’s a memorable, confident and inquiring fiction debut.

A young cou­ple get more than they bar­gained for when they trans­late a rare folk bal­lad in this effec­tive Irish horror.

The exploita­tion and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of ancient arte­facts is pun­ish­able by a fate that may be worse than death in Paul Duane’s night­mar­ish read on Irish folk tra­di­tion. The inves­tiga­tive struc­ture and the cen­tral idea of an art­work that holds ter­ri­ble ram­i­fi­ca­tions for all who encounter it gives this lit­er­ate, slow­burn fic­tion debut the feel of a mod­ern J‑Horror: Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse come to mind.

It sees a pair of ama­teur musi­col­o­gists, Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Char­lie Maher), going under­cov­er in the Irish folk scene in an attempt to make a fast buck by punt­ing on near-extinct sounds to omi­nous Lynchi­an collectors.

A tip leads them to a poten­tial­ly huge score, but the song they even­tu­al­ly hear caus­es all man­ner of vio­lent, super­nat­ur­al and trans­for­ma­tive upsets. Gild­ing the lore and poet­ics of Irish folk music with overt goth­ic embell­ish­ments – via Ian Lynch’s sludgy, doom-laden score and a visu­al aes­thet­ic of flick­er­ing elec­tric lamps – Duane’s film takes a time­worn nar­ra­tive con­ceit and works it in intrigu­ing new directions.

Its final reel draws in themes of gen­der flu­id­i­ty, sex­u­al long­ing and gen­er­a­tional trau­ma which, though bold in their exe­cu­tion, don’t entire­ly gel with what’s come pri­or. But this is a grim­ly refresh­ing and con­fi­dent toe-dip into the world of hor­ror, and we hope Duane choses to revis­it this atmos­pher­i­cal­ly murky pool.

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