FREWAKA (2024)

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Directed/Written by Aislinn Clarke.
Check out the trailer here!!

After her mother’s suicide, Shoo (Clare Monnelly) leaves her pregnant fiancée Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya) to pack up her mother’s apartment and takes a temporary job to take care of an elderly woman because the couple needs the money. Shoo arrives at the house of the elderly woman named Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) and though she was under the impression that she was working with a stroke victim for a short period of time, Shoo soon finds that Peig suffers from mental illness, specifically agoraphobia, hallucinations, and delusions that there are ancient beings from Irish lore out to get her. But the longer Shoo stays with Peig, the more she realizes that these delusions may be all too real.

While it takes its sweet time to get there, FREWAKA is a terrifying little folk horror filled with all kinds of unnerving imagery and paranoia so thick you couldn’t cut it with the sharpest of knives. Reminiscent of the slow creep Polanski doles out in ROSEMARY’S BABY, the signs are all around Shoo as she gets comfortable in Peig’s large house in the countryside. The neighbors give Shoo sideways glances. The tree outside is decorated with strange ornaments. There’s an annoying goat that keeps on popping up out of nowhere. And Peig herself speaks of something out to get her in her basement. Adorning the entranceways of Peig’s home are horseshoes and other totems meant to protect her from these creatures and though Shoo is skeptical, Peig makes a pretty convincing argument that something definitely is amiss. It all unfolds slowly and while, yes, I knew it was a horror movie I was watching, I found myself intrigued to find out just what kind of horrors are tormenting this lonely elderly woman or if there was anything there at all and both Shoo and Peig are suffering from some shared psychosis. I won’t reveal which it is, but the answers are effectively terrifying.

But you have to stick with FREWAKA to be rewarded with those answers and the escalating paranoia that unfolds from it. I know those who are used to more fast paced modern storytelling will clock out of this one pretty quickly as much time is taken to get to know Shoo and Peig. Both of them present themselves as pretty unlikable characters with Shoo refusing to take part in packing up her dead mother’s things and leaving it for her fiancée to do and Peig being brassy and downright violent to Shoo and anyone else who crosses her doorstep. Still, the longer we get to know these two seemingly different, but surprisingly similar characters, you find out just what made them such damaged people. Clare Monnelly is tough to get to know and tougher to like as Shoo, but by the end, I was rooting for her. Same goes for Bríd Ní Neachtain’s Peig as whether or not the monsters in her basement are real, she is a very sad and lonely woman. Most of the movie unfolds with these two actresses in the middle of the frame as the terrifying things pile up around them and they carry the film well.

The imagery that shows up in nightmares, hallucinations, and in the really real world in FREWAKA are bone-chilling. Sure the sack headed stalker is always one of my favorite looks for a monster, but the ones that show up here take the cake. Add on some folksy reed and stick masks and that creepy goat and you’ve got some moments that really are going to be burned into your brainpan. But sit back and relax with this one. It needs to simmer in order to be best digested. I myself was getting a bit antsy at the halfway point, but thankfully, but the hour mark things really get rolling into nightmare town and the chills start happening fast.

There are some familiar beats in FREWAKA. If you know your folk horror, the ending is not really going to come as a surprise, but it is done confidently and has an effectively strong emotional punch. Writer/director Aislinn Clarke also did the faux documentary/found footager THE DEVIL’S DOORWAY from a few years back. I haven’t seen it, but after seeing how Clarke deftly orchestrates some great scenes of building tension and some downright nail-biting moments of sheer terror, I think I’ll be checking that one out real soon. As is, if you have the patience, I think this Irish folk horror is going to burrow its way under your skin if you sit with it long enough.