By – Gareth Jones

For fans of Irish folk horror, Steve Oram, modest films that pack a punch, Hereditary

Coming out five years after Ben Wheatley’s folk horror revival Kill List, Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song also predated Ari Aster’s folk horror masterpiece Hereditary.  Both A Dark Song and Hereditary use the folk horror genre as a way of addressing grief and mourning.  That is one of the wonderful aspects of the genre, the ability to represent so many different elements of the human experience through the prism of how horrible “folk” can be.  Regardless of how many witches, creatures, or other things that go bump in the night are used, it is ultimately fellow humans that are the most horrific and terrifying.

This is Liam Gavin’s directorial feature length debut, and he also wrote the screenplay.  It is an impressively mature and developed work.  He has gone on to direct two episodes of The Haunting of Bly Manor, so he must have impressed Mike Flannigan.  He came up with the idea after brainstorming ideas for films that could be made with very low budgets.  A Dark Song is an excellent example of the creativity that comes out of budgetary restrictions.  The cast is essentially a two-hander with the leads being played by Irish actress Catherine Walker and Englishman Steve Oram.  Both are exceptional in their roles. This is a fine companion piece to Oram’s other folk horror film that he made with Ben Wheatley Sightseers.

Catherine Walker plays Sophia, a grieving mother who hires Joseph Solomon (Oram,) a modern day warlock or shaman, to help her speak to her dead child, or at least that is the pretense that she has given him.  Each of them have trauma and issues that are initially unspoken, but are revealed in key moments.  Solomon brings a great deal of pain and anger to the experience.  They are isolated in a house (filmed in Northern Wales) that Sophia is renting and this key trope of folk horror is both essential and a great way to save funds by only having essentially one location to shoot.  In fact, they left the house in the same state they found it, in disrepair and filthy, giving the cast additional motivation for their performances.  The film shows the mystical process of connecting to a Guardian Angel, based on the book of Abramelin.  It shows them performing purifying rituals and other techniques, over the period of several months, effectively showing how this is a slow yet dangerous process.  Gavin does a superb job of slowly building the tension and ratcheting the suspense up very slowly.   Many films will have moments to give the audience some release.  Here there is nothing but continued pressure until the very end. The film works on the premise of what it would be like to take a situation that normally would have been presented in the distant past, but here firmly places it in the current time frame.  Solomon may have been an esteemed member of society in a different era, but today he is a bitter, angry, alcoholic trying to escape the world.  Sophia is a woman unable to process her grief for her lost child, especially when it comes to forgiveness. Who is to blame for the tragedy? Put them together and you have a dangerous mix that Gavin uses to challenge the audience with expectations and emotions.

One distinguishing and unique aspect that the film examines is the concept of a Guardian Angel.  This intersection of folk tale and Judeo-Christian ideas is presented in a novel and transcendental way.  It begs the question of what you would do if you were actually to meet your Guardian Angel.  What would you ask for?