- Culture
- 12 Jul 18
Don't Leave Home features Lalor Roddy of this year's IFTA winner Michael Inside
Set to premiere tomorrow night at the Galway Film Fleadh, the trailer has been released for heavily buzzed new Irish horror Don't Leave Home
Anna Margaret Hollyman stars as Melanie Thomas, an American artist whose current project is developing small-scale replicas of homes where unsolved mysteries occurred. Her work puts her in contact with an Irish priest (Lalor Roddy) working in a village where a girl once went missing.
Sparking a correspondence, Melanie is then invited to the Irish country side to create an original sculpture for the man of the cloth. There things get weird as secrets of the past come to light.
The trailer does a great job at skirting plot details while building suspense, in case one is worried of spoilers. Still there is definitely a vibe of Get Out to proceedings, particularly with the last line of the trailer.
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That comparison wasn't lost on anyone else. Indiewire's Eric Kohn in a rave review after the film's screening at SXSW 2018 called it: "‘Get Out with Catholic Guilt in the Irish countryside", as well as making connections to Hereditary (both share creepy doll house replicas) and Rosemary’s Baby (with its themes of Catholic guilt).
Strangely enough, Don't Leave Home is not the only Irish horror featuring Lalor Roddy as a priest playing at this year's Galway Film Fleadh. Last night, Magdalene Laundries set found-footage horror The Devil's Doorway played to great reviews.
Speaking about Roddy, The Devi's Doorway director Aislinn Clarke said: "I loved working with him. I hope to again. We kept in touch. I know a lot of actors but I think Lalor is one of the best we have in Ireland. He deserves to get more recognition than he does."
The two releases add to the particularly strong Irish horror cinema scene of late. Recently there was high-profile zombie film The Cured, while previous years saw critically acclaimed works released like The Hallow, Without Name and A Dark Song.