All You Need Is Death

This is not a movie that it is easily defined. It is part folk horror, part Gothic horror and unique in its own right.

Two people. Anna and Aleks search for old folk songs the rarer, the better. They visit an old woman, Rita who sing them an ancient and forbidden song. The song in an ancient and unknown language is creepy and the way the old woman belts it out is actually quite unnerving. This is the bare bones of the story and I am not going to go further into depth as this needs to be experienced without knowing the plot of outcome. This is a wonderful film that explores all the darkness that the song describes.

There is a bleakness to this film that gives the sense that nothing good is going to come from discovering the song or the story behind it. There is a real sense of unease and dread as the story unfolds and towards the end, it is not for the faint of heart.

This is a movie that really ups the stakes in the horror genre, it is well acted and well told, a visual treat that while some might find slow and a little confusing, other will love.

Give it a watch and decide for yourself.

You know when you watch a movie for the first time, and you can tell that it's a new favourite even though you've not had a repeat viewing yet? This was one of those times. The atmosphere and weight and interminable sense foreboding that this film has is incredible, and it's inventive in every way that I wanted it to be, and it's a a film that I'm going to enjoy coming back to in the future

Part folk horror, part body horror, part quest for music that will change your perception and open you up to new experiences (be they good or bad), All You Need Is Death follows a pair of folk song archivists as they track down an obscure song that has never been recorded, only to discover that bad things happen to everyone who hears the song

The sound design is everything; it's peak Lynch in terms of ominous background noise, and the actual music, very importantly for a film about music, hits the mark every time.

So it's always interesting to go into a film based on the reviews and accolades it has gotten and the fact that it's a foreign film. There's a certain allure to its potential and ability to give us something new. Sadly I can't really speak to any of that being a function of this film. It just never feels like anything is really happening outside of the engagement with the actual music being sourced and the characters it's sourced from. I really did want this to be a Lynchian world of bizarre visuals and a truly uncomfortable exploration of the human plight through attaining that which we shouldn't. It never rose to that level but I think there's the possibility they can attempt again to get there on the next go around.

Learning of a potentially intriguing story, a pair of documentarians committed to recording long-forgotten folk songs learn of a potentially long-forgotten song in the Irish countryside and set out to capture it against the wishes of the locals, unleashing a bizarre curse that envelops them both.

This was a rather problematic genre effort. Most of the film's positive points stem from the central setup and atmospheric touches running throughout here which provide a genuinely engrossing sense of mystery. The main idea of relying on the power of traditional and even sometimes generaltional customs, in this case regarding the nature of the mythic song in question, offers the kind of fascinating insight into the past that this one relies quite heavily on. With the majority of the middle half devoted to how this plays out regarding how to honor the traditions of the past that has used a specific medium over time, this kind of corruption makes for an intriguing setup looking at the way it unfolds involving the king of unraveling curse thtat takes place. That allows for some rather chilling scenarios to take place here as a result with the way it all comes to include various gruesome attacks and cofrontations to let the curse play out. Outside of this, though, there's just not much going on here to remain interesting. Far too much of the film is reliant on the idea of the curse coming to fruition but it's never given much of any care of orinterst in what that means or why they're interested in getting the song recorded. The whole concept is so wacky and bizarre that there's no real grounded form in play here to make things have an emotional attachment to it so that comes off rather flimsy and awkward, especially as this one goes along with the aspects of the curse as that doesn't get explored in the slightest so it all makes for a confusing time. When it's not concerned with the aspects of the curse, it's just flat-out dull as very little happens so the pacing here is completely stiffened to the point of plodding blandly along to where it's nearly impossible to care about the story going forward. There's so little life or energy in what's going on that it just doesn't register anything but boredom, all of which hold this down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

The idea of tracking down a forgotten, cursed folk song for a movie is pretty good. This isn't that movie.

What follows an ok beginning just gets worse and worse until a absolutely dismal ending. Is the curse passed on to the woman who memorizes it, is the curse passed on to anyone who hears it, or is the curse even a curse? You won't know after watching the movie because the people making this mess have no idea either.

The best you are going to get out of this is some nice looking location footage and a performance by Olwen Fouéré that ends way to early. Everything else is a nonsensical mess where nothing set up pays off. Truly and awful film.