Friday, August 31, 2018

Irish Horror: The Lodgers (2017)

The Lodgers is a 2017 Irish film directed by Brian O'Malley, stars Charlotte Vega, Bill Milner and Eugene Simon, and was filmed almost entirely at the infamous Loftus Hall in County Wexford, a real-life source of many urban legends and the location of much legend-tripping.

I first heard stories about Loftus Hall while I was was in college. Many of my colleagues from the southeast side of the country knew of this place. Today it has been reinvented as a tourist attraction (dark tourism, I guess) but back then it was dilapidated, rotting, and hella spooky. Pretty much everyone who spoke to me of the place had visited with their friends upon a dark night on a 'dare.' There are myriad local legends about the place, some of them unique to Loftus Hall, others seeming to be the kind of generic myths that get attached to any spooky old building. In particular, it was most often said that a gentleman visiting the Hall centuries ago was revealed to have been the Devil himself (he revealed a cloven hoof when a lady bent over to pick up a dropped playing card), upon which he disappeared through the roof in a pillar of fire. The patch where he burst through the roof was said to be still visible. Suffice it to say that Loftus Hall is a unique location in which to set a period ghost story movie, and I heartily approve. 

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Irish Horror: Wake Wood (2011)

I took the time last week to watch a couple of recent (ish) Irish horror movies, and while I probably won't have time to record my thoughts on them for the podcast, I'm instead going to scribble a few ideas here. I figured that I'd be covering more Irish horror on the 'cast, especially as there are now more and more entries in this once thinly-populated category, but between one thing and another, I haven't got around to covering many yet. Anyway, here's my two cents on 2011's Wake Wood. There'll be no spoilers, and these are not really reviews as such, more a collection of analytical notes, if I may use so grandiose a term.