Hey, it’s some initial impressions of the third movie the Gutter’s own Carol Borden saw at this year’s Overlook Film Festival: Paul Duane’s All You Need Is Death (Ireland, 2023):

All You Need Is Death is like a ballad full of dread and a desperate foreboding. It has a mood that sinks in heart deep. And, oh, how it lingers. Written and directed by Paul Duane, All You Need Is Death (Ireland, 2023) concerns a song that is more than a song. It might be cursed. It might be a trap. It might be a cage. And, unfortunately, it is unlocked.

Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) are procurers of Irish folk songs that they sell to a shadowy network of collectors who seek variants and ideally undiscovered, never-before-heard songs. Anna and Aleks are not particularly ethical in their methods and even seem to enjoy manipulation and pulling low level cons to record songs and acquire leads as much as the songs themselves. The couple decides to take a seminar from a respected collector, Agnes (Catherine Siggins), and solicit her help learning more about a lead. They have the name of a woman who knows songs no collector has heard before. Anna is warned about the moral hazard to herself and others of seeking something from a stranger, even a song, and flirts her way out of it. Which, I suppose, is very like folk tales and old ballads alike. There is a reason, of course, no one has heard the song. And, of course, Anna, Alex and Agnes, will ignore the reason to varying degrees. Instead they ignore Rita’s warnings. And so a curse is brought down, a trap is sprung or a cage is unlocked. Perhaps all three at once.

All You Need Is Death horrified me almost entirely with mood, atmosphere, and people behaving awfully. There is little in the way of jump scares or gore. But there is tremendous dread and foreboding. Most of the film hinges on the idea of a cursed ballad, which is fascinating, and the performances, which are tremendous.

Read more of Carol’s thoughts on the film here.