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‘Fréwaka’ Review: A Rattling Irish Horror Film Satisfyingly Blends Folk Traditions With Genre Tropes
A care worker takes an eerie new assignment days after losing her estranged mother in Aislinn Clarke's creepily effective second feature 'Fréwaka.'
The second feature from Irish writer-director Aislinn Clarke may as well share a title with her first, “The Devil’s Doorway,” which landed prominent distribution (including a deal with IFC Midnight) by applying well-worn genre devices to more locally specific nerve points. Like its predecessor, this is an outwardly straightforward chiller, suited to genre-specific events and platforms, but with some darker devil in the details — indies like “Relic” and “Midsommar” are among “Fréwaka’s” apparent reference points, and an out-of-competition premiere at Locarno lends it some arthouse pedigree. There’s certainly little warmth surrounding the past here, beginning with an eerie, cryptic prologue, set in 1973, that sees a rural wedding crashed by yobs in sinister, medieval-looking straw masks, followed by yellowing newspaper headlines that puzzle over the bride’s subsequent disappearance.
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