An Taibhse – The Ghost (Frightfest 2024) Review 

The boom surrounding the Irish language has been tripping off the tongue of many audiences and critics alike for the past few years, but there’s rarely been a period for its revival like this week. The Quiet Girl and Arracht have been Gaelic triumphs for the nation over the past half-decade, and since the end of 2022, the milestone of having Irish legally recognised and taught in schools across Northern Ireland has caused a landslide of interest for the indigenous language. This week’s release of the unexpected international hit Kneecap has set the issue ablaze once more, with the comedic rap “biopic” underlining the language’s cultural and political importance, so what better time to premiere Ireland’s first Gaelic horror film than alongside it? Programmers at Frightfest made the smart decision to screen An Taibhse (otherwise known as The Ghost), on the same day Kneecap started screening across the nation – adding fuel to the fire, and raising awareness of a language that has been oppressed and restricted for far too long.

So while Kneecap is doing the numbers at the box office, how is An Taibhse faring on the festival circuit? 

This spooky tale follows father and daughter pairing Éamon (Tom Kerrisk), and Máire (Livvy Hill), in their stint as caretakers of a rundown mansion in the mid-19th century. Their task is to keep things from falling apart during the harsh winter in the isolated countryside, and they bring with them little physical luggage, but plenty emotional baggage. Their respective wife and mother passed away some time ago, and with lots of time for reflection during their isolation, that heavy load is unpacked piece by piece. The house isn’t the most hospitable either, with cold bedrooms and dank corridors being a day-to-day reality for the family – driving Máire to give in to the temptations of the restricted library, and sending Éamon to the bottom of a bottle. Once the door is opened and the cork is popped, Máire is beset by visions of a malevolent presence known only as Alexander that she believes to be a dark figure from her past, and the wholesome winter of parent-child bonding soon descends into an unsavoury waking nightmare.

A modest COVID lockdown project with a tiny production team and even smaller cast, An Taibhse is a resourceful film where it counts. Director John Farrelly knows he has a hell of a location on his hands with County Wicklow’s Coolattin House – the largest country house in Ireland, and from top to bottom, it shows. He sets up his camera at looming heights in corners, drinking in well-rehearsed scare sequences that are often in one unbearably patient shot, and when his camera is untethered it becomes a nerve-jangling experience. One subterranean revelation late in the film is accompanied by fluid and energetic camerawork that creates the illusion of an inescapable hellscape for Máire, and the Steadicam itself is so dynamic, it feels like a whole new character. Farrelly captures some special stuff outdoors too, with dusky landscapes being ripped right out of an eerie picture book, and nocturnal hallucinations of wood and fire adding some whacked-out energy to the otherwise idyllic surroundings. For a film as small as this, it’s capable of capturing some significant beauty and terror in equal measure, spelling a promising future for Farrelly as an imagemaker. 

It’s on the page where An Taibhse falters. Beginning as a traditional ghost story then twisting itself into something much more real, it ironically finds its strongest footing in more phantasmagorical territory. Lantern-lit trips to the most illicit places of the mansion provide some early portents – a painful sequence involving a wardrobe door that won’t stay shut is some well-worn but effective fare, and Livvy Hill gives a convincingly fraught set of reactions to a relentless series of tormenting horrors. Yet in shifting gears to too many morning-afters, the sense of dread is frequently short-circuited, with horrifying moments of Máire being dragged down the hall by an unseen force punctuated by nonchalant bleary eyes, suggesting that any sleep loss is from a lumpy mattress instead of a demonic disturbance. It’s that kind of stop-start structure that wears the material thin after a while, and prevents its more nihilistic elements from digging under your skin.

Farrelly is also a filmmaker who clearly adores The Shining, so Kerrisk has a lot of nasty fun building an increasingly unhinged Éamon who reeks of putrid Jack Torrance energy – bringing out some impotent cabin fever in a similar way to the similarly-plotted Kubrick film of 1980. Kerrisk also veers towards vicious verbal intimidation a la Sexy Beast’s Don Logan at intervals, folding in another of Farrelly’s preferences as a fan of Jonathan Glazer – the particularly percussive drumbeat during a scene of icy punishment will be familiar to anyone who has had the Under the Skin score on repeat for years after its release. There are shades of The Lighthouse in its distinctly stinky view of alcoholism too, but perhaps its greatest debt is to the current trend of “elevated horror” cultivated by the handsome films of A24. Like a product of that wheelhouse, it’s about the all-consuming power and evil of grief, unfortunately wrapping itself up in a finale that offers a rather simple and bloody solution to the traumatic events that precede it. Máire goes through a lot (gamely played by Hill in a brave performance), but her character has been written into a corner by Farrelly as a victim through and through, and is only offered a glimmer of self-actualisation by the time the credits hit like a sledgehammer. It’s a shame that a film so indebted to a work featuring a petrified, but determined woman (the late Shelley Duvall’s much-misunderstood Wendy Torrance), falls short of writing a female lead with a similar defiance and visceral power. 

There are a few endearingly ramshackle parts to An Taibhse that allow it some wiggle room, as it’s seemingly impossible to work around a few of the modern touches that Coolattin House has adopted over the years, (like light switches in Máire’s bedroom or an extractor fan in the below stairs kitchen). As a micro-budget ghost train ride, one could do a lot worse than Farrelly’s admirably unpleasant tale of the terrors of single-parenting. The use of Gaelic language throughout also gives An Taibhse some added political oomph, deepening the scars of colonial rule, and standing defiantly against it in speaking exclusively in the language of its people. It’s a film of interesting elements that has its cold bite thawed away by a looping structure and narrow mystery, stretching the 91 minute runtime to its absolute limit and resulting in a mixed bag of surprisingly strong cinematic touches, and a tired story tying them together. 

Simon’s Archive – An Taibhse: The Ghost