Fréwaka is an Irish folk horror film, directed by Aislinn Clarke, and the cast includes Clare Monnelly, Bríd Ní Neachtain, and Aleksandra Bystrzhitskay.
Every now and then, a horror film comes along that reminds you why this genre isn’t just about traditional scares, it’s about truth. Fréwaka uses horror as a scalpel, cutting open cultural wounds, generational trauma, and religious guilt, and letting them bleed slow and steady across the screen.
Directed by Aislinn Clarke, Fréwaka dives deep into the windswept boglands of folk horror, but don’t expect pretty forest shots and pagan dance circles, as this is a stripped-down, deeply personal story about women scarred by a system that told them suffering was holy and silence was strength.
At the center of the film is Shoo (Clare Monnelly), a young nurse whose mother has just died. Not tragically, nor suddenly, she just… died. And Shoo doesn’t flinch. No tears. No remorse, as this wasn’t a loving relationship cut short, it was a toxic one finally ending.
But rather than process that grief (or lack thereof), Shoo leaves her pregnant girlfriend to deal with the funeral mess and takes off to care for an elderly woman in a remote Irish village.
Now, in most horror setups, this is where the creepy house and maybe a jump scare or two come in, but Fréwaka doesn’t deal in clichés, and Clarke is playing a different game here. Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), the old woman Shoo’s meant to care for, doesn’t speak English, barely leaves her bed, and is treated like a curse by the rest of the village.
There’s also a glowing red crucifix, a goat (because of course), and a weird teenage boy who keeps popping up like he’s auditioning for The Ring. But none of this is thrown in for cheap thrills, and Clarke builds the atmosphere with patience.
The film oozes tension, which is tight, airless, and constant, and the longer Shoo stays, the more she starts to come undone, not just with everything going on around her, but also with her own trauma creeping back in through the cracks in her psyche.
Fréwaka is a film that layers theme on top of theme, without ever losing its focus. Yes, it’s about generational trauma, but it’s also about inherited guilt, the toxic legacy of organized religion, and the erasure of women’s pain.
Peig, as it turns out, is no ordinary recluse. She’s a woman with her own past, one tied directly to this system. She didn’t just vanish from her wedding decades ago, she escaped something., and what she’s hiding from might be more spiritual than literal. Or it might not.
Fréwaka lets you sit in the uncertainty, and it doesn’t spoon-feed mythology to you, as it asks you to listen, to watch, and to connect the dots between folklore and fact, between supernatural evil and the very real kind.
Clarke also threads in Irish mythology, namely the Na Síde (the fair folk, though fair in name only). But she doesn’t romanticize them, as these aren’t whimsical forest spirits, they’re woven into a history of control and superstition.
And that’s where the film’s cultural critique sharpens, because here, folklore isn’t just background dressing, it’s a tool of both survival and oppression, and women, especially, are the ones forced to carry it all.
Shoo and Peig are mirror images of one another, two women at opposite ends of a life filled with silence and suffering. One is trying to escape the past, the other is being dragged back into it, and their relationship is tense, messy, and ultimately, the emotional heart of the film.
There’s no redemption arc, no hug-it-out moment, just an unspoken recognition that they’ve both been damaged by the same systems, the same stories, and maybe, just maybe, something even older.
Fréwaka is restrained brilliance, and Clarke doesn’t overplay a single beat. The cinematography is bleak and beautiful, and the sound design is minimal, often letting silence speak louder than any score.
And the performances? Monnelly’s Shoo is all internalized rage and numbness, while Ní Neachtain’s Peig is hauntingly raw, a woman who’s been holding her breath for 50 years and finally lets it out.
It’s a slow burn, sure, but every second matters, and the film makes you sit in discomfort and watch what it reveals, and in that way, Fréwaka does what the best horror does, it tells the truth in a way that makes you shiver.
By the end, you’re not left with answers, but with questions. About what we inherit. About what we pass on. And about how much of ourselves is really ours at all.