"All You Need is Death": Folk Horror to Chill your Blood with a Song

By Juan Carlos Ampie04/08/2024

The voice of "All You Need is Death": Olwen Fouere is the keeper of a cursed song. / Photo by Ishmael Claxton, courtesy of XYZ Films.

Folk horror is having a moment. Goran Stolevski's "You Won't Be Alone" (2021) was one the best horror movies of 2022. Indie Home Video label Severin rescued a batch of forgotten classics from all over the world in their stellar box set "All the Haunts be Ours." Now, we get a brand new, haunting folk horror exercise straight from Ireland. “All You Need is Dead” is inventive while inscribing itself in twistedly romantic ideas of tradition regarding folk music and horror cinema.

Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) are fellow musicians and lovers. They moonlight as traditional music compilers when they are not playing in a band toiling on the margins of success. Or perhaps we should say, pirates. They secretly record folk singers performing forgotten songs. One could think they aim to expand their repertory or reinvent their sorry band as a new Clannad, but we only see them trying to sell a recording to a rich collector. The encounter with the wheelchair-bound eccentric in a moonlit industrial wasteland serves as a Lynchian wink.

They don’t seem to have much success until they get a hint about an “original source.” A woman named Rita Concannon (Olwen Fouéré) may hold on to an old, haunted ditty so far uncollected. After spending their ill-earned money on a workshop led by Agnes (Catherine Sieges), a standoffish ethnography motivator, they set on the right path to hit the jackpot. They connive their way to the woman’s doorstep. Despite being pickled in alcohol, the old gal regales them with the ditty, which Anna promptly records. Unlucky for all of them, it is a melody bound to unleash a curse upon them all.

A Corridor down to Oblivion: Catherine Siegges moves to the rhythm of "All You Need is Death" / Film still courtesy of XYZ Films.

Writer-director Paul Duane has a knack for mise-en-scene. The movie opens with some unseen authority interviewing a bar folkie about his encounter with Anna and Aleks. We see him on a camcorder video screen, hinting at how the recording of media is a pivotal point of the plot. The scene anticipates something bad happened to the couple, who are the object of the investigation. This framing device leads to the extended flashback that comprises the bulk of “All You Need is Death.” A copy of the bar’s security camera fades to the past, the actual night when Anna and Aleks play their little con on the singer. She secretly records the man, and when confronted, Aleks barges in, pretending he is a stranger on the singer’s side. When she leaves the bar, the camera follows her in a reversed dolly, eventually showing us how he awaits her a few meters down the block, hidden behind a wall. They celebrate their sorry victory with an embrace. As a viewer, you feel like you are in good hands.

The recording of image and sound, both performed by the characters and inflicted upon them, contrasts with the tradition that has protected the song and brought it into the present. Rita warns the visitors that the song dates from a time before writing, even before the Irish language came into being. It should not be written down or shared through public performance - of course, they will not heed her warnings. The song is a cautionary tale about a common woman who betrays a king's love and pays dearly for her transgression. We must take Rita’s word for it since the words come from a time before language was articulated. She goes on to sing, or rather howl, an undecipherable dirge-like lament.

Bad choices: a few flashbacks look like amateur hour at the Celtic fair in "All You Need is Death." / Film still courtesy of XYZ Films.

This romantic legend brings the weakest element of the movie. We may accept that Anna dreams of its scenario even before listening to the song - the evil from yore may be reaching out to her through time - but Duane does not resist the temptation to visualize the punishment of the wanton woman centuries past. The flashbacks are mercifully devoid of dialogue, but they look like amateur-hour theatrics, as if Sid and Marty Kroft did a Celtic drama. It cheapens the movie, which operates within the budget limitations of indie production. Fortunately, they are brief enough to brush away if you have enough goodwill toward the movie.

I did, and do. Besides Dale’s evident directorial skill, he extracts fantastic performances from his cast. Simone Collins is great at making Anna coherent, even when she oscillates from grifter to innocent, revealing a surprising reservoir of decency - or at least, fear for the unknown. Charlie Maher is her equal to Aleks, a strapping stranger in a strange land. First, he is “a refugee from some communist country,” as he is dismissively described at some point, and also, a man in a decidedly female-dominated plot. If “All You Need is Death” finds its audience, it might catapult them to a long career. These indie phenomenons also highlight actors who, for unfathomable reasons, have been unable to break into the big time. It is a crime that Catherine Siggins is not in every movie filmed in Ireland and beyond. Her Agnes is a slick operator, too sure of herself to see how deep in trouble she is.

Two agents of vengeance besiege the trio. First, there’s Breeze Concannon (Nigel O’Neill), Rita’s middle-aged son. He does not take kindly to strangers messing with his mother, even if the woman and her ancestors did him wrong. O’Neil is a worthy foe. There is an ironic contrast between his demeanor and the dastardly actions he takes. Also, Breeze is a puppeteer by trade, giving this worthy artistic profession a very needed shot of visibility. He bravely follows the path opened by John Cusack pulling strings in “Being John Malkovich” (Spike Jonze, 2000).

Unexpected allies: Nigel O'Neill and Simone Collings begin their collaboration unauspiciously in "All You Need is Death" / Film still courtesy of XYZ Films.

The second figure of retribution working against our unsuspecting musical ethnographers is not of this world. They are the evil spirits that protect the legend and, by extension, the song. They manifest as vaguely anthropomorphic shadows - “black smudges,” as Breeze describes them. After the ill-advised old-timey flashbacks, this is the second creative choice working against the movie. You can see the budget limitations affecting the finish of the visual effects. It’s even more dispiriting because the practical make-up that gives life - or rather death - to a particular character is appropriately grisly and convincing in a classically gory note. Alas, this might be an issue related to the quality of the online screening copy. I can do anything else but give the movie a pass on it. Also, if production houses with bottomless coffers like Marvel shrug at the memes making fun of subpar Special FXs - Hi, - “Thor: Love & Thunder”! - why should we malign an indie for putting forward their best effort?

Sometimes, it’s best to leave some things to the imagination. It’s easy to see the movie working at a higher level of filming, dismissing the problematic elements, or filming around then. Still, “All You Need Is Death” taps into the essence of folk horror. The accruements of technology and the hunger for knowledge or success are no match against human evil—an evil so powerful that it can survive the passage of time and thrive.