Music is one of the most mysterious natural phenomena of our world and in Irish folk horror All You Need Is Death, music becomes an ancestral force of doom and destruction. Written, directed, and produced by Paul Duane this chilling slow-burn dives headfirst into a hallucinatory world that peels back reality and opens the doors of perception to plane where entities and energies older than mankind thrive and feed on the very fabric of our being.
The importance of music, specifically Irish folk song, is immediately established. Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) travel the country, interviewing and secretly recording rare Irish folk ballads. The people they meet with are incredibly protective of these songs, and it’s as clear as day to everyone that Anna and Aleks have ulterior motives in acquiring these snippets of their culture. Like headhunting protected animals, Anna and Aleks are specifically seeking out songs that have been passed down verbally, resisting recording for generations.
“All You Need Is Death is true folk horror”
The nature of Anna and Aleks “research” is unknown, but their mission becomes clear after a fateful meeting with Rita Concannon (Olwen Fouéré, Mandy) who promises to show Anna a song unlike any she has ever heard. As though meeting a witch for a midnight conjuring, Anna sits with Rita to learn the song, which carries with it the pain and the power of something older than she could ever imagine. It’s a haunting sequence, and one that foreshadows the dark fortune placed upon them all. See, Anna‘s boss secretly records Rita‘s song which is a big no-no and, as they all eventually learn, a mortal sin.
In the opening moments of All You Need Is Death, the film declares, “Love is a knife with a blade for a handle,” a sentiment it really hammers home through its characters’ downward spirals. The song drives a stake between Anna and Aleks, once lovers, and pulls everyone near it into a mind-bending trip of psychedelic mysticism. It’s a twisted story filled with shadow-people, brooding monologues about life, the universe, and everything, but not a movie that plays by any conventional rules of storytelling.
All You Need Is Death is a true folk horror, in how it is a tale told through the senses rather than story. It’s something you feel in your bones, something in touch with your primal self. Its images have more to say than its dialog and whether it works for you or not is really going to vary from person to person. If you like vibe-heavy atmospheric storytelling that relies on sound design as much as it relies on speech to convey it’s meaning, this is a folk horror that will speak to you.
Paul Duane’s All You Need Is Death premiered at the 2024 Panic Film Fest and is now available on VOD and select theatres. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the festival and let us know what you thought of this bewitching folk horror on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord
