[Review]: Fréwaka

Clare Monnelly as Shoo

Following up 2018’s found footage chiller The Devil’s Doorway, filmmaker Aislinn Clarke has once again returned to her horror roots with Fréwaka, a haunting folk tale whose dialogue is primarily in the Irish language, Gaeilge. Fréwaka follows primary care worker Shoo (played by Clare Monnelly) as she attempts to look after her elderly patient Peig (played by Bríd Ní Neachtain) who seems to suffer from paranoia and delusions involving the Sídhe (fairy folk). 

After her mother’s horrifying and sad death, Shoo takes on a last minute job as an at home health care worker, leaving her Ukrainian pregnant partner Mila ( Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya) behind to clear out her mother’s flat of her belongings. When Shoo arrives in the rural village in which her case is situated, she is met with the typical country folk welcome of unnerving stares and whispers in the Irish language, of which Shoo is also fluent in. Approaching the large country house of which her charge Peig resides in, she experiences the extent of the old lady’s distrust and hatred of outsiders. Shoo soon learns that Peig is deeply afraid of the Sídhe, fairy folk from the underworld who hate humans and make it a habit of stealing away

women who are on the verge of the veil through marriage, child birth or death. 

Bríd Ní Neachtain as Peig

Whilst attempting to come to terms with her own childhood and relationship with her deceased mother, Shoo begins to experience increasingly bizarre phenomena that has her questioning whether it is the Sídhe or her own mind breaking down the doors of both the physical house and her psychological sanity. 

In Fréwaka, director Aislinn Clarke does what she does best as a filmmaker by handling extremely delicate and raw subject matters with respect and care, whilst still forming genuinely terrifying worlds rooted in both history and the present day reality of the Irish people. In her 2018 film The Devil’s Doorway she explored the horrors of the Irish Magdalene Laundries and the last repercussions of subterranean evils carried out by the Catholic church, and in her latest film, she continues to concern herself with deeply buried terrors still festering beneath Ireland and its most vulnerable citizens. Utilising the figures and myths that surround the Sídhe, through both Clarke’s script and the main actors’ performances, Fréwaka continues the tradition of passing down folklore both orally and aurally, a trait made extra prominent through the absence of modern technology, isolation from the world outside of the rural community, as well as a lack of access to information through smartphones or internet.  

The performances of the central actors Clare Monnelly and Bríd Ní Neachtain as Shoo and Peig are magnetic, with both constantly displaying the pain of each woman’s past on their faces, exuding talent with not only the dialogue, but also in physical acting during the most quiet of moments during the film. Their delivery of the Irish language is song-like, with every sentence uttered in a cadence reflective of the Irish tradition of songs and poetry, which is also a credit to Clarke’s writing. The soundtrack provided by composer Die Hexen is uncomfortable and nauseating yet envelopes the viewer in an uncanny atmosphere, coupled with the constant buzzing of flies adds a whole other unsettling level to the audience experience of the film.  

Through the physical setting of the country house used as the central location of Fréwaka, any audience that has spent time in rural Ireland is presented with a nostalgic and overly familiar environment, one filled with trinkets of both Catholic belief and pagan folkloric origin. Between the statuettes of the Virgin Mary and crosses of St. Bríd, to the hanging of the horseshoes and the spilling of seeds, Clarke paints a picture of the reality of present day Ireland, one that still firmly stands behind its superstitions both Christian and pre-Christian. Through a continuous use of the colour red, Clarke reminds us that despite these items of folkloric and religious comfort and “protection”, there is danger amongst them, both for protagonist Shoo and all women of Ireland. 

With an ending reminiscent of The Wicker Man (1973) or any of the folk horrors from the 1970s, Fréwaka is a chilling reminder of exactly why Ireland remains haunted by both its past and present, and proudly continues the reign of Irish filmmakers in horror cinema. 

4 Screams out of 5