All You Need Is Death review – Irish horror finds evil in taboo folk ballad recording

The story of two historians unleashing evil while recording a song is a strong idea and there are good moments and performances, but it is too chaotic and unfocused to resonate

Paul Duane is the film-maker who in 2011 made Barbaric Genius, a gripping documentary portrait of ex-convict, ex-vagrant and tournament chess player John Healy, whose memoir The Grass Arena is a classic of outsider art literature. Now Duane has given us this horror film which, though it begins with interesting subversive and satirical ideas, and an interesting allusion to Guillermo del Toro, finally becomes, for me, simply too chaotic, strained and unfocused.

Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) are social historians who travel around remote rural pubs in Ireland, recording folk ballads; they become fascinated by rumours of an old woman who lives thereabouts who can sing a thousand-year-old song, taught over generations from mother to daughter, which has never been recorded or transcribed on paper. Asking questions about her makes locals suspicious; Anna and Aleks assure one man that they are not journalists or interested in anything “political”, but he replies darkly: “There’s nothing that’s not political …”