The main character is Shar, a high school student living in a quiet suburb of Ireland with her mother Angela, Uncle Aaron and grandmother Rita. At home, the girl suffers from the detachment of her relatives and at school from the bullying of her classmates. On the eve of the next Halloween celebration (by the way, the birthplace of the holiday is Ireland), something strange happens in the Shar family: her mother suddenly disappears for a day, and when she returns, she behaves strangely. Or, to put it in the terminology of the genre, as if something had gotten into it.
Grandmother tells Shar that her mother has been replaced by otherworldly forces and that, according to ancient belief, you can deal with the evil couple with the help of fire, which can drive away everything bad from a person. So a difficult task falls on the shoulders of a lonely and confused teenage girl – saving her mother from the clutches of pure evil.
The screenwriter and director of the film, Keith Dolan, makes reference to Irish folklore when explaining his idea. Accordingly, persons suspected of the presence of a demonic power were burned at the stake. Contrary to this reference, the main character of the film is not her mother, who gradually turns from the girl’s protective figure to the main source of danger, but Shar herself, a lonely and disturbed teenager coping with the painful experience of growing up. .
“A curse. Night of Horror”, like the Babadook, which has already become a cult movie, is a horror film in which fear is nothing more than a background to reveal the story, by no means its main driving force. explored through the lens of horror.Literally, something terrible became a continuation of the inner “demons” of the hero and turned into an accurate image of the state of a person facing mental problems.
Dolan’s painting is another representative of the slowburn horror subgenre, in which events are deliberately slow, because the atmosphere is more important. Here, instead of just depression, the problem of raising children is explored: childhood is already over and the next stage of life fears hell. The disappearance of a mother who is difficult to recognize later becomes a symbol of teenage loneliness, when you feel alone / lonely in the whole world without such necessary support from adults.
Dolan neatly tackles the eternal history of fathers and children (in this case, mother and daughter), without obvious stylistic excesses. As befits a small independent film, it proves that the author’s whole idea is more important than big budgets and special effects. Although there are enough frightening scenes where the mother transforms from someone you want to hug into a scary figure you want to hide from.
Also wondering “Damn. Night of Fright continues the chain of Irish horror films that rethink family values. In the same 2021, the picture “Son” was released, in which the mother and son flee from the followers of a religious sect. And although at first the tape seemed like another story about dangerous sectarianism, it gradually became clear that at the center of the plot was a mother’s fear that something might be wrong with your child; would be different somehow.
Dolan’s painting (ironically, Canadian namesake Xavier Dolan also has a project investigating bad mothers – the drama “Mother”), on the contrary, takes a child’s point of view: What if it’s my mother? The original title of the film, which unfortunately disappeared in the local adaptation, is “You are not my mother”.
The horror genre, unlike any other, is believed to help the viewer recover from internal trauma. The nature of the genre contributes to this: first there is a strong tension, then a long-awaited catharsis – an emotional outburst. And in slow burners, thanks to the viscous and unhurried atmosphere, this effect is enhanced by the immersion of perception. The audience, immersed in the world of the film in such detail, turns from a simple observer to an accomplice of events.
“A curse. Horror Night” joins the ranks of therapeutic horror movies that are slowly gleaming but eventually igniting a big and bright flame. And even if Dolan himself may be caught in the author’s ineptitude and the script sinned with unclosed stories, this is a curious and talented film, clearly expansive. It wasn’t designed for an audience, but genre connoisseurs should enjoy it – especially those who remember themselves well as a teenager.