Banshee Blacktop, an Irish Ghost Story

Atmospheric, mysterious, beautifully filmed, slow and moody - as a good ghost story should be. I found this to be full of nuance and mystery with a slowly creeping dread, like the Witch and the Babadook. This sort of film is not for everyone. My husband wouldn't make it past the first 5 minutes, as he'd find it boring and wouldn't be able to follow the plot while also checking the news on his computer. But if you like to turn out the lights and give a film your full attention, this one will creep you out slowly and completely.

I have no idea why this film isn't getting the plaudits it deserves. The direction is excellent, and you can clearly see that the director is the same man behind the short film The Wheelhouse.

The film is shot beautifully, giving depth to the desolate and barren locations and imbuing them almost with characteristics so that they become characters in and of themselves.

The sound especially is exceptional in this film, and again heightens the sense of dread permeating through many of the scenes.

I always feel the best horror films are the ones that leave you thinking about certain ideas and remembering certain images days or weeks after watching, and that is certainly what has happened with this film.

I stumbles upon this film by chance and am very glad I did. A true hidden gem.

I was lucky enough to see Banshee Blacktop at a private screening, and am still reeling from the experience.

The film concerns Dierdre (Kelly McAuley) and Fionn (Dylan Kennedy), a young couple from a secluded community who are forced to flee along a road in the Irish wilderness, pursued by two mysterious figures. One of them, an old woman in a fluttering nightdress, may be a creature from ancient folklore.

The action is inter-cut with the interrogation of a holy man from the island, Seamus Monkton (Liam Halligan), by detectives from the mainland. Monkton's guilt-wracked testimony gradually reveals the appalling secret behind the couple's flight.

Banshee Blacktop is writer/director Sean Garland's first dramatic feature (following his elegiac US documentary NokotaHeart) and is a triumph of mood and atmosphere. The funereal, rainswept expanses of the Irish countryside are rendered with a painterly, desolate beauty. Ancient stone circles, crumbling churches and the deserted titular road combine to evoke a time-stopped Ireland haunted by both the sins of the past and the forces of the supernatural.

The film has a quality reminiscent of M.R. James's ghost stories. The everyday world co- exists with a malign other realm, whilst a family is afflicted with a repellent secret, kept from the civilized mainland by the islanders. Needless to say, the action culminates in a truly unsettling denouement, the effect amplified by the inspired counterpoint of a jaunty folk tune.

The performances are strong across the board. McAuley and Kennedy are appealing protagonists, their moods flitting from passionate defiance to dread-filled resignation, whilst Halligan powerfully conveys a hushed sense of being genuinely haunted. Bernadette Carlin also deserves praise for her unsettling performance as 'Dead Kathleen', her shuffling, implacable progress across the island conjuring a presence at once corporeal and phantasmal.

Special notice should also be given to Frank O'Sullivan and Marcus Lamb as the two detectives, who help leaven the tone with some cutting one-liners. O'Sullivan in particular almost steals the film, a one-take recollection of a disturbing episode from his past being a stand-out moment.

Garland's cinematography and Jim McKee's sound design (completed at American Zoetrope) are both first-rate, and lend the film impressively high production values. Composer Dene Bola has crafted an atmosphere-drenched score which drifts from dreamily ambient to thunderously oppressive.

In all, Banshee Blacktop is a remarkably assured debut which should appeal to both discerning art-house audiences and mainstream genre fans, and I hope it receives the wide distribution it deserves.

Banshee Blacktop reminds me of the old stories my grandmother would tell me when I was a kid...but from a queasy, eerie perspective. Sure it's about ghosts and the demons pawing us back to our collective pasts but it's about being young, free...running through the maze of adult life. Allegorical, symbolic and truly haunting BB is also just a wild ride, a powerful, poignant thriller. Don't expect all the tired old clichés and you won't be disappointed.

The only other film I have seen in recent years to compare with this gem is HORSEHEAD. I love dreams and nightmares set to film. This one is brilliant and beautiful, and concerns more the Irish legend of the bean nighe (washing woman) than the bean sidhe (banshee or woman spirit). I adore the added legend that if a man loves a woman too much he spiritually bleeds to death. There is so much going on here, from true love to incest to spiritual guides who try to save but fail. Just watch it and develop your own conclusions, but living in Ireland and understanding Traveller culture as well as Irish culchies and jackeens, and their difference, along with a large dose of Irish legend, will help you understand this wonderful, and very dark, narrative.