Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Film Review – An Taibhse (The Ghost) (2024)

This highly atmospheric Irish-language ghost movie entombs a disturbing secret under a stratum of jump scares and dares us to exhume it.

Éamon and his daughter Máire are desperate to make a success of their new venture caretaking a vast mansion in the Irish winter of 1852. They have weathered the horrors of an Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger), a famine Máire’s mother did not survive, so any financial security is at a . If they do a good job long-term warmth and nourishment will follow.

However, the family’s misery is far from complete. When Éamon maims his foot in a wood-chopping accident he dissolves into a malaise of pain and alcoholism. Pissed up and paranoid he loses all track of time, stuck in an endless loop of solitaire and swearing. Meanwhile, exhausted Máire is left to struggle with the chores and endure his hair-trigger rage. As the situation worsens their dark dynamic of dependency and gaslighting, both literal and metaphorical, contorts into abuse and violence.

John Farrelly‘s fabulously eerie ghost tale represents a cinematic landmark as the first ever Irish language horror film. Teeming with effective jump scares and pregnant with subtext, An Taibhse purges the devastating social toxins of the Great Famine and exposes them to contemporary reductionism.

Bathed in the warm glow and swirling shadows of candlelight we become trapped in the sprawling mansion with Máire. She is a simple girl with extremely complex psychological issues buried under a landslide of even more complex stress management. Like some minimalist mid-19th century The Shining we are forced to witness her deconstruction at the hands of someone else’s mental breakdown, except in this case, the frozen maze is the fragile coping mechanism of her mind.

The Great Hunger depleted the Irish population by one-quarter. It was a devastating social crisis known as an Drochshaol (the bad life), and the human cost that rots beneath the grim statistics gives An Taibhse its contextual lifeblood. As such, the film is both sensorily aggressive and heartbreakingly tragic. The brave choice to utilise Gaelic compounds its authenticity and pays respect to a dark heritage that reconfigured the cultural landscape.

Éamon and Máire deserve a better life, yet their destiny is cruelly blighted. For a moment hope and salvation seem a reality, but as the ferocious final few minutes of the film reveal, the damage has already been done.

An Taibhse is highly recommended for horror fans who prefer depth to deprivation and subtle layers to summer camp slayers and it is creepy catnip for those who worry that The VVitch feels too mainstream. That being said, it is also a scary and shocking fright film, with a superb twist, that represents a viable alternative to more luxurious studio fare.

Completely self-funded, it is astonishing that eleven people could have crafted such an accomplished period piece for just €3,000.