Haunting Melodies: Songs and Spectres Abound in Irish Folk Horror ‘All You Need is Death’
First coined by Jacques Derrida in his book Spectres of Marx, the term ‘Hauntology’ refers to the persistence of elements from the social or cultural past that recur in the present, as in the manner of a ghost. To put it another way; we are all haunted by fragments of our shared history. These unquiet spirits are not ghosts in the traditional sense. They may be ideas, motifs or patterns of behaviour. However, they all insist upon the present, intruding on our consciousness, mocking our pretensions of progress and development. Before we constructed modern cathedrals of glass and steel, we worshiped in much older places, churches of stone and blood. Beneath our asphalt and concrete, secrets lie buried. Now, in Paul Duane’s All You Need is Death, the old ways are stirring, and they will not be ignored.
Lovers Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) are amateur musicologists with a particular interest in Irish folk music. Traveling the country, they aim to record hitherto unrecorded folk songs, regional variations of well-known standards, and perhaps even the original versions that laid the groundwork for the modern interpretations we know today. However, Anna and Aleks are not motivated purely by a desire to document and preserve the past – they want to sell their wares to private collectors. Only the choicest cuts will suffice, and they aren’t above playing fast and loose with the truth if it gets them closer to a payout.
Forming an uneasy alliance with a sinister collector named Agnes (Catherine Siggin), the pair zero in on a woman who may have one of these fabled ‘original’ songs. Rita Concannon (Olwen Fouéré) is an alcoholic recluse who hasn’t sung in public in years, but who agrees to a private recital of an ancient tune, on the proviso that no recording be made. While Anna is willing to agree to this condition, Agnes makes a secret tape of her own, and this broken promise will have dire consequences for everyone involved.
The song has no title, says Rita, although if it did it would be “Love is a Knife with a Blade for a Handle”. It is an ancient story, a tale of a king who wreaks a terrible vengeance on his lover. It is sung in a language that predates Irish and, we are led to believe, may be one of mankind’s oldest tales of love and mourning. It is the raw material from which all modern variations are spun. Those who hear it become drawn back into a timeless pattern of obsession, lust, betrayal and murder.
As you would expect for a film so concerned with the ways that music can bypass our logical faculties and strike at the heart of the subconscious, much attention has been paid here to sound design. The folk song that ends up ensnaring our would-be collectors is gut-wrenchingly performed by Olwen Fouéré. Those expecting a lilting melody will be in for a shock – Olwen’s performance is closer to the anguished cries of a wounded animal. It remains shocking every time it reappears, haunting our protagonists with a strange, hypnotic resonance.
Elsewhere the hiss, crackle and hum of digital and analogue recording artefacts are used to eerie effect, combined with ominous droning noises. It is all very effective, inviting comparison with 2012’s Berberian Sound Studio.
All You Need is Death also delivers some extremely strong performances. Catherine Siggin is fiendishly sinister as Agnes, and Simone Collins plays a protagonist with an arresting blend of ruthlessness and romanticism. However, the clear stand-out for us is Nigel O’Neill as Breezeblock Concannon. He is a tragic figure – the unwanted male heir to an ancient bloodline of witches. The matrilineal nature of his family’s practices leaves him as an embarrassing loose end. One of the most affecting and horrifying sequences of the whole film is a monologue in which he describes the disinterested cruelty of his grandmother, the terrifying attentions of spectral apparitions that he suffered as a child, and the terrible lengths he went to in order to rid himself of his curse.
There are moments in which budgetary limitations can jerk the audience back to reality. The black smudges that haunt Breezeblock are a little on the ropy side, and scenes set in the distant past come complete with garden-centre tiki torches (unfortunately made infamous and instantly recognisable by the far right during the Charlottesville rally of 2017). Fortunately, writer/director Paul Daune is great at making the most of what resources are available, and at recognising the importance of mixing physical and digital effects judiciously. As a result, there are some striking moments of body horror, particularly as the film reaches its climax and the transformative powers of the song are revealed.
Thematically, All You Need is Death shares some elements with the horror novella My Heart Struck Sorrow by Jon Horner Jacobs. In this story, a musicologist travels through the southern states of America, collecting recordings of traditional folk music for the library of Congress. However, the protagonist has an ulterior motive, bordering on obsession: he believes that all the regional variations of the folk song ‘Stagger Lee’ share a common ancestor. This original version contains unrecorded verses that our researcher is desperate to hear. Needless to say, his journey takes some unexpectedly dark twists.
He shares an affliction with Anna, Aleks and Agnes. He has pretensions towards a noble mission, but what he really has is an insatiable, amoral hunger to collect. He is, and they are, haunted by absences. The gaps in their collections call out to them, always teasing at the corners of their minds. They would follow the breadcrumb trails left by these spectral songs, even into hell itself.
What Paul Duane has created here is a film that stands out amongst a crowded field of movies for whom ‘folk horror’ is simply an aesthetic. In All You Need is Death, the horror doesn’t come from a simple “robes + standing stones + chanting = scary” calculus. Rather, it speaks to a common fear that those ancient traditions, rites and stories represent patterns and archetypes that still have a magnetic pull on us today. If we don’t treat them with respect, it implies, we might well be drawn back into the cold and frightening world from which they sprang.
