Boys From County Hell (Chris Baugh, 2021) is a fascinating take on the horror genre which could only exist in the world of Irish cinema. This film shows a type of rural humour, a punky daftness unique to Irish comedy, which blends excellently with some creative and artfully placed gore. The cast is strong in all corners, not a weak link to be found; from the lead character Eugene Moffat, played by Jack Rowan, whose measured cockiness makes him a personal favourite; the gruff but lovable Frankie O’Neill cast as his Father, and the entourage of dopey friends, including Derry Girls star Louisa Harland who shows she can excellently straddle the boundaries between dramatic and comedic performances.
The fictitious town of Six Mile Hill in County Derry, where the film takes place, serves as a brilliant setting for the gruesome consequences of the Moffat family disrupting the slumber of an ancient vampire. This location and its denizens feel so fleshed out that Boys From County Hell makes an offer to the audience to consider the location heavily in their response to the horror shown. Blood being spilled, ancient violence being renewed, vampiric entities taking the lives of young men and leeching off of an entire community—parallels can easily be drawn between Six Mile Hill’s fictitious local history and the real history of conflict and bloodshed which still haunts County Derry today. Nonetheless, Boys From County Hell has a certain generic freshness and doesn’t rely on dredging up allusions to 800 years of violent British occupation or the Troubles for vampiric analogies.
The aforementioned ‘freshness’ is a subtle thing. Horror, as we know it today, tends to be either mindless gore and spectacle (which sometimes makes me feel uncomfortably voyeuristic), or slightly inaccessible, high brow, Ari Aster-type stuff, (which often just leaves me feeling a little bit hollow and gross). Boys From County Hell feels tempered, balanced between these two modes of horror. Sometimes blood is everywhere and people are getting impaled and maimed in all sorts of nasty ways. Sometimes there is psychological poignancy fused with terror.
This film isn’t without its flaws, should you know. Whilst its take on the genre and location are new and exciting, the script can drag; sometimes a little bit too much time is dedicated to silly hijinx. A comedy is meant to be comedic, however Boys From County Hell is more than just a comedy, and certain moments feel like it’s toeing the line between the worlds of comedy and horror that it so carefully straddles.
Boys From County Hell is out in Irish cinemas now.
