Cast: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Austin Amelio
Genre: Horror
Director: Damian McCarthy
In Irish Cinemas: 1st May 2026
A troubled novelist travels to an isolated hotel on the Irish coast, a place tied to the only happiness his parents ever seemed to share. Their honeymoon unfolded there decades earlier, and the journey becomes an uneasy pilgrimage: their ashes, kept far too long, are finally meant to be scattered across the surrounding landscape. Beneath this seemingly sentimental gesture lies something far more desperate, a quiet hope that proximity to their fleeting joy might somehow ease a life hollowed out by grief, regret, and emotional paralysis.
The writer, Ohm, carries the brittle confidence of success alongside a deeply corrosive dissatisfaction. His latest book, infamous for its bleak and merciless conclusion, mirrors the state of his inner world. Isolation has hardened into a habit, alcohol has become a steady companion, and whatever unresolved wounds linger beneath the surface now bleed into every interaction. Charm has long since curdled into hostility, leaving behind a man who alienates as easily as he breathes.
The hotel itself, tucked away in a remote and windswept corner of Ireland, feels suspended in time, picturesque at a glance, yet threaded with an undercurrent of unease. Its emptiness is striking; no other guests roam its corridors, and the silence presses in with quiet menace. That tension fractures almost immediately upon arrival, when a grotesque sight greets him in the car park: the carcass of a goat, recently killed after displaying bizarre, almost obsessive behavior clambering atop cars to stare at its own reflection. The explanation does little to soften the unsettling tone; if anything, it deepens the sense that something is profoundly off.
Inside, interactions offer little comfort. The staff endure Ohm’s abrasive demeanour with thinly veiled indifference. At the same time, Fiona, tending the bar, remains unimpressed by his reputation and quietly perceptive of the misery he tries and fails to conceal. Attempts to uncover traces of his parents’ stay lead to an even stranger discovery: the honeymoon suite, supposedly central to their memories, has been sealed shut. The reason given borders on absurdity: a centuries-old witch is said to be confined within. Whether dismissed as local folklore or something more sinister, the claim lingers, refusing to be ignored.
What begins as a melancholy retreat spirals into something far more disorienting. The narrative twists through surreal encounters and increasingly fractured realities, punctuated by moments of shocking violence and dark, often grotesque humour. Episodes of physical and psychological collapse land Ohm in hospital not once, but twice, blurring the boundary between what is real and what might be conjured by a mind under siege.
Beyond the hotel grounds, the surrounding woodland introduces another curious presence: Jerry, an eccentric drifter who inhabits a van and drifts through life on his own peculiar wavelength. His concoctions, most notably a hallucinogenic smoothie brewed from foraged mushrooms, inject an unpredictable, chaotic energy into an already unstable situation. Equal parts comic relief and agent of disorder, Jerry embodies the film’s strange tonal balance, where absurdity and dread coexist in uneasy harmony.
What unfolds is less a straightforward ghost story than a warped descent into guilt, memory, and self-destruction, where the past refuses to stay buried, and the line between the supernatural and psychological horror dissolves entirely.
Overall: 6.5/10
Movie Reviewer
