The Morrigan Review: A Folk Horror Film That Drifts More Than It Dares

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The Morrigan

The Morrigan is directed by Colum Eastwood and the cast includes Saffron Burrows, Emily Flain, James Cosmo, Toby Stephens, Art Parkinson

My Thoughts on The Morrigan

The Morrigan follows Fiona, played by Saffron Burrows, an archaeologist who studies Gaelic mythology, as she drags her teenage daughter, Lily (Emily Flain), to a remote Irish island - estranged mother, rebellious teen, mysterious folklore - where Emily Flain’s performance as Lily is the best thing about the movie.

There’s no over-explaining her frustration or rebellion, as you see it all in her posture, the sharpness of her gaze, the way she reacts to her mother and the environment, and she feels like someone who belongs in the world she’s inhabiting, even when the supernatural elements begin to intrude.

Art Parkinson and James Cosmo are also quietly effective, and while they don’t dominate the scenes, they provide weight where it’s needed, and Parkinson in particular has this restrained energy, almost like a coil under tension, which contrasts nicely with the island’s stillness. 

And then we have Saffron Burrows’ Fiona, who is meant to be the story’s emotional anchor - Fiona is distant, analytical, and perhaps meant to be enigmatic - but what comes across instead is a lack of urgency or engagement, which makes it hard to invest in her journey, especially when she’s supposed to be contending with both maternal strain and supernatural danger.

The island itself is one of the film’s strongest assets, - the inn, the cliffs, the fog-shrouded coastline - they all dominate the frame, but the cinematography doesn’t always work in the film’s favor, because the visuals are often so dark that you can barely make out what’s happening. 

It’s meant to be immersive, I think, but I spent a lot of time squinting at shadows.


The film itself also leans heavily on familiar folk horror tropes, where The Morrigan itself appears with minimal explanation, a sudden and mostly external presence, and the film is more interested in showing the consequences of her emergence than explaining why she’s there.

Now, that works to a degree, but it also exposes how derivative some of the other elements are, where there are predictable jumps, repeated motifs, and dialogue that drifts toward cliché, so by the time the supernatural events start escalating, I was already guessing where most of them were heading.

The pacing is also another frustrating part of The Morrigan,  where we get long stretches of quiet or minimal activity alternate with sudden developments that are almost abrupt in their intensity, as the film shifts between observation and escalation, but neither fully lands. 

I didn’t mind the quiet sequences in theory, but in practice, they sometimes made me impatient, as while there’s an attempt at hypnotic rhythm here, and I can see it working for some viewers, but it often left me feeling like the film was drifting without a clear destination.

Female empowerment is a theme also on play here, and not in a good way. 

Fiona and Lily are repeatedly subjected to derision, micro-aggressions, and interruptions by male characters, who feel more like obstacles than real people, and I can see that the film is trying to highlight their resilience, but the repetition undercuts the point. 

The empowerment the story gestures toward is muddled by these continuous setbacks, which makes it hard to feel that the narrative was genuinely supporting them.

The Morrigan still

The Morrigan herself has an hypnotic quality to her appearances - sudden, external, and uncontextualized - where she has a presence, but the film never fully capitalizes on this, as we’re left with a figure who is more symbolic than threatening, and more hypnotic than horrifying, which iss an odd balance, because the film clearly wants to unsettle, yet it often tips into predictability instead.

Ultimately, The Morrigan is an ambitious but uneven film, where it shows its influences openly and wears its folk horror roots on its sleeve, but rarely does it manage to make them feel fresh, and while I can see the potential, the execution is messy enough that it never fully lands.

For me, the film was more frustrating than exciting, and more awkward than immersive, and ends up a film that lingers in intention more than in execution.