Daisy

The Daisy Chain is a pretty decent "spooky kid" thriller that kept me watching and interested throughout. It focuses on the experience of a couple (the wife is pregnant) who move to rural Ireland (or is it Wales? ) to escape the big city and the traumatic miscarriage of their first child. They eventually adopt a young girl named Daisy after her baby brother and parents die under mysterious circumstances.

It was well acted and well scripted as well. I found the atmosphere of the setting to be creepy and dismal enough to add to the general feeling of doom and gloom. I've got a soft spot for movies about dark children, and this one did not disappoint.

As other reviewers have mentioned, it's not filled with cheap scares or gore. I think that "creepy" is probably the word most often used in comments on this page, so I'll stick with it. My one complaint is that I found the ending to be less than satisfying, but I suppose that is fairly minor overall.

What a strange and beautiful film this is. An intelligent horror with the underlying themes of motherhood and loss. A movie that reminds us all of what it is to be an outsider in a tight knit community and what it is to be different. Morton plays outsider and expectant mother Martha who has lost her first baby through cot death. Pregnant at the time of filming this is a brave choice for Morton who looks amazing!!! Steven Mackintosh plays the steady school teacher husband Thomas. A departure for Mackintosh and one that shows just how wide a range he's capable of playing. Into their lives comes a young girl called Daisy. This role is played by Marie Anderson who's first film this is and although mostly silent throughout she is riveting. She sets Morton and Mackintosh against one another as she inhabits their every waking hour and we slowly start to fear for their unborn child. The wildness of the landscape adds an eerie dimension against which the story is played out. Is Daisy the uncared for child that the community have abandoned or is she the fairy changeling that some say she is????

I love movies that take you to another part of the world. The Daisy Chain doesn't shy from showing its coastal expanse of hidden rocks, wild seas and windy cliffs. It's worth a look just for that. This is the second movie I've seen that explores Irish folklore, the other being The Hallow (2015), but the two movies are vastly different. The Hallow explores an almost 'zombie' invasion of 'fairies', whilst The Daisy Chain looks at child substitution. This is a highly competent movie with a good story, script, casting and performances, as well as beautiful surrounds. The key, I think, is the choice and performance of the child, which is truly remarkable. It's all very haunting and deliciously disturbing. There are lots of movies that conjecture the inherent spookiness of early childhood. This is a good one.

Horror movies, such as they are, remain a fairly uniformed experience. Despite the buckets of viscus and brains that are unashamedly tossed around the screen they typically conform to certain expectations; 15 jumps minimum, casual brutal violence and characters so wooden they have to chop them to pieces to prove they're homosapiens.

Horrors that have stood the test of time, The Fly, The Shining, Don't Look Now, The Exorcist, The Wickerman all have one thing in common; they shied away from quick thrills. Using relatively few easy jumps and the bare minimum of bloodshed, they work on a purer level of dread. Daisy Chain does just this.

The first thing that impresses is the direction. Aisling Walsh, best known for 2003's Song for a Raggy Boy, may not be working from a script of her own but the direction is calculated and assured. The imagery retains a painterly quality, the sets are draped in a muddy colour scheme which makes the outside grim and the inside soft and warm. Images such as the removal of the cross from the wall (only to have left an impression on the wall) and the barren wasteland quality to the setting (shot in County Mayo) leave each shot with a resonant bleakness that is nearly as harrowing as the story itself.

The acting from the entire cast is solid but the highlight must be newcomer Mhairi Anderson, playing the eponymous Daisy. The child actor shifts between menace, and adorable with impressive subtlety. Between playfully skipping around to suddenly kissing Samantha Morton directly on the lips, the kid manages to scare the bejesus out of you by doing very little.

And while people do get killed in this film we usually only see the end of the event rather than the beginning. The characters don't delve into hysterics, nor do they stupidly allow themselves to be a vulnerable for long. Instead life is shown to be normal despite the abnormal circumstances. The mayhem surrounding the main characters is only a by product of the strange intangible fear that exists within the (albeit hazard free) household. Shots are longer and issues are more repressed- living with Daisy proves to be more scary than living without (in the greater sense of the word).

Trust independent film making to lean toward the aforementioned classics above (Daisy Chain even features one or two nods to The Wickermna) and having the understanding to know what really affects in horror. Daisy Chain doesn't make you jump out of your seat, it instead creeps under your skin and lasts for days.

I saw this film at a sold out screening at the recent Raindance Film Festival. It is a beautiful piece of work both haunting and affecting. Samantha Morton gives an amazing performance as does Steven Mackintosh but it is newcomer Mhairi Anderson's perfectly judged performance as the waif Daisy that stays with you and keeps you guessing right up until the end. Shot in the magical but often bleak landscape of the West of Ireland this is a haunting and beautiful film that will stay with you for a long time. Another very very fine film from one of Europe's finest female directors whose individual voice and point of view is always interesting. Congratulations.