Aislinn Clarke is back in the director’s chair with a personal and terrifying journey through her home country of Ireland in Fréwaka. It’s been just over six years since Clarke’s last directorial effort, which also marked her feature debut, with the 2018 well-received found footage horror film The Devil’s Doorway. Her latest film marks a major milestone for the genre, as Fréwaka is composed of almost exclusively Irish Gaelic dialogue, the first horror movie to do so.

Led by Small Things Like These star Clare Monnelly, Fréwaka revolves around Shoo, a young woman who, while in the midst of processing the sudden death of her mother by suicide, is ᴀssigned to be the home care worker for an agoraphobic elderly woman, Peig, in a remote Northern Ireland village. As the two spend more time with one another, and Shoo learns about Peig’s suspicions of a sinister group of enтιтies known as the Na Sídhe, she finds the demons from her past bleeding into the horrors of her present situation.

Ahead of the movie’s release, ScreenRant interviewed Aislinn Clarke to discuss Fréwaka. The writer/director opened up about how she sought to reconnect to her roots through the film, particularly with it being almost entirely written in Irish Gaelic, as well as how she focused on what “scared the crap out of“ her as a kid about the Na Sídhe rather than diving into folklorish studies about them. Clarke also offered her insight on the movie’s ending and how it ties into its larger exploration of social and generational trauma.

Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Fréwaka!

Clarke Only Wanted To Write An Irish-Language Horror Movie If There Was A Reason

“…I Developed The Idea From The Ground Up…”

While Clarke has made movies in her home country before, Fréwaka comes with the unique element of being the first-ever Irish-language horror movie. In reflecting on her decision to pen the script in Irish Gaelic, Clarke points to her father being a major influence on her at a young age, as all of her education “was through the medium of Irish” and was “raised speaking the Irish language“, as “it was this big thing” for her dad.

Even with this background, Clarke admits she “had never really considered making a film in the Irish language” through her early career, until the producers of a film she wrote, but didn’t direct, approached her with the idea. The director then took to contemplating the idea, though immediately gave herself the directive that she “didn’t want to just do it for no reason“, nor did she want to take an “English-language script I had and just translate it.” Instead, she “developed the idea from the ground up“, which became her personal “lens on Ireland, our creepy folklore and our equally creepy history.”

Clarke Pulled More From Her Own Memory Than Research For The Na Sídhe

“I Was Raised Steeped In This Folklore…”

With Ireland having plenty of folklore and mythology to pull from, Clarke found herself drawn to the Na Sídhe to be Fréwaka‘s primary threat for a few different reasons. One of the first was her own fears of them as a child, in which she was “steeped in this folklore“, pointing out that while other cultures would describe the enтιтies as fairies like Tinker Bell, they’re considered “malevolent” and “almost demonic” in Irish folklore, which made them a “presence in my life that I was worried about all the time.”

Another reason Clarke wanted to explore the Na Sídhe was her desire to explore, “What is their problem?“, particularly with the Irish people. “They really have a problem with us, they really want us to suffer,” Clarke explained. “It’s like the Irish invented this race of people that we colonized and pushed underground as a sort of form of self-harm, because we were colonized. It’s like we invented these mythical creatures that we did that to that feel just as s—–y about that as we do. The Irish are very into masochism, beating ourselves up, so that’s where they came from.“

Though finding that they proved to be a good “metaphor to explore social trauma” and her country’s history, Clarke “intentionally didn’t get the big book of Irish folklore” for writing the Na Sídhe into her film. Instead, the writer/director relied on her memory, noting how folklore is “a living thing” and is generally “handed down by word of mouth over generations“, in which “every teller has their own little twist“:

I think that’s especially a very Irish kind of take on it. I think it becomes calcified if you’re just going to go, “These are the rules, this is what happens.” It’s more kind of instinctive and organic if you just go from your sense memory of what freaked you out. So that’s how I built it, from my instinctive feeling of what scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, that’s what my research base was.

Clare Monnelly Was A Rare Discovery For Clarke

The Fréwaka Director Also Praised Her Star For Having “Totally Inhabited” Her Character

As the movie is a personal journey for Clarke, Fréwaka protagonist, Shoo, is as much of a lens on the country’s folklore, which made her casting all the more important for the writer/director. After humorously recalling her concerns that “it would be really hard” to find an actor who could speak Irish, as “some of them won’t be any good“, Clarke praised Clare Monnelly as being “super easy to cast” in the film, particularly after she had a supporting role in a previous project Clarke wrote.

“Clare Monnelly, who plays Shoo, is really magnificent,” Clarke beamed. “She just completely became Shoo, totally inhabited her. Fréwaka is her first lead role, but I knew that she existed because of that other film, and spoke to her pretty early on. I spoke to other actors, as well, but it was kind of always going to be Claire, and she is just the right person. She just totally inhabits that character, she’s really powerful, a great presence on the screen. I think we’re going to see her in tons more stuff, as well.“

In reflecting on what her star brought to the role that she hadn’t already envisioned for the character, Clarke admitted having “almost forgot what existed before” the movie was made, given a production “evolves” and “becomes its own thing“. Instead, she praised Monnelly for bringing a “kind of playfulness” to Shoo, particularly as she “always imagined Shoo as being this sort of spiky character“.

She’s like a stroppy 12-year-old or something, in ways. She’s got atтιтude, she’s kind of huffing all the time, which I really like. I think that is a really nice edge that she brings to it. But, yeah, there’s probably lots of other things that I don’t even remember right now.

Clarke Felt Blessed With The House Used For The Shoot & Her Production Team

“…Even With A 20-Day Shoot And A Low Budget, It’s So Much Easier…”

In addition to its compelling concept and moving performances, Fréwaka also boasts a very unique visual style, utilizing alternative camera angles for its more fantastical elements and close-ups for its more paranoia-driven scenes. In reflecting on developing the visual palette for the film, Clarke praised her collaboration with cinematographer Narayan Van Maele, who also worked with Kate Dolan on You Are Not My Mother and the upcoming SOULM8TE, calling him “a genius” and for having “a wonderful eye“.

In addition to Maele, Clarke pointed to Art Director Nicola Moroney as being a key factor in developing the movie’s look, celebrating her having done “a phenomenal job of creating the world of the film“. She did, however, also point out how the house they sH๏τ the movie in “was crazy“, leaving most of its furnishings in place, including the attic seen in the climax, in which the team “put a couple of pieces of taxidermy” and “one or two pictures“, and only “redecorated entirely” a couple of rooms.

“This was a very cut-and-loose film, we had a really short shoot period, where it was 20 days, and it was like a war zone,” Clarke explained. “It was like, ‘Bam, bam, get in there. Shoot things.’ The location that we found was just kind of magical, like someone was on our side. Maybe the Na Sídhe were on our side for once, and didn’t want us to suffer. [Chuckles] But, yeah, if you’ve got someone like Nicola with the art directing, and then you’ve got someone like Narayan, even with a 20-day shoot and a low budget, it’s so much easier to get what you need to get.“

Shoo’s Final Decision Has Multiple Layers In Fréwaka’s Ending

Clarke Also Layered A Lot Of Heartbreak Into The Movie’s Finale For An Important Reason

After trying to protect Peig from the Na Sídhe and the local townsfolk wanting to sacrifice her to them, Fréwaka ends with the enтιтies tormenting Shoo with mind games, including seemingly taking the form of her fiancée, Mila, urging her to leave the attic she and Peig were hiding in before Peig sacrificed herself to stop them. Upon leaving the attic, though, Shoo finds Mila’s car outside of the house and engagement ring on the stair banister, while the door to the basement and Na Sídhe’s realm is wide open, indicating she was taken.

The movie ultimately ends with Shoo donning her grandmother’s old wedding dress and giving herself to the Na Sídhe, though leaves it unanswered as to her explicit motivations for doing so, as the movie is as much about generational trauma as it is about the terrifying enтιтies who caused them. When asked why Shoo ultimately gave herself to them, Clarke explains that it was twofold, particularly as the movie’s post-credits scene reveals Mila is still there and wants to bring her back:

I think she wants to stop the generational cycle and offer herself up so that Mila can be saved. But, of course, then at the very end, there’s a little scene in the credits. We know that Mila is willing to give anything, and she’s pregnant, so that could be right back to the beginning, again, of the cycle.

Unlike Peig, who had very visible scars on her back from her time being abducted in the Na Sídhe, Shoo seemingly gets a grander welcome to their realm, being adorned with a crown in an ominous ritual on a scenic mountain plane. Clarke clarifies that “there are a couple of different ways you can read” the ending, the first of which being that it’s “all in her mind” as the Otherworld, as it’s called in Irish mythology, can “take on a lot of different forms“, and therefore she sees “what Mila sees when she goes into the basement.”

However, regarding the crown, Clarke quickly points out that Shoo’s “eyes are bleeding” and that “the Goat King is carrying a whip” in the distance, thus pointing to it “clearly not going to be a great place” for the protagonist. As to why she went for a darker ending, the writer/director was very direct in the fact that, sinc the movie is “talking about generational trauma” and that the Irish in general have “tons and tons of crap…that we still need to unpack and deal with properly“, delivering a happy ending “would just be kind of a lie.“

“We’ve got high rates of suicide, alcoholism, substance abuse, self-harm, so on,” Clarke explained. “You have to sort of acknowledge that this isn’t the end. We can’t just leave and go, ‘That was great.’ You’re left thinking that there are still issues. I think that’s the only responsible way to end something like that, or else you’re just making up a fairy story, really, if you have a happy ending there.“

Clarke also goes on to explain the thematic importance of Fréwaka‘s ending, particularly how the Na Sídhe seem to keep targeting women for their torment and kidnapping, denoting how Irish women at the start of the Irish Free State “were really poorly handled in the Consтιтution“, ultimately being “written literally back into the kitchen” and “written out of society and power“:

There’s something about elevating a woman, giving her this crown, telling her she’s in an elevated place, but actually treating her like total crap. That’s the metaphor that I’m playing with there, which is kind of what happened to Irish women.

More About Fréwaka

Irish folk horror from Aislinn Clarke (The Devil’s Doorway) follows home care worker Shoo, who is sent to a remote village to care for an agoraphobic woman who fears the neighbors as much as she fears the Na Sídhe — sinister enтιтies who she believes abducted her decades before. As the two develop a strangely deep connection, Shoo is consumed by the old woman’s paranoia, rituals, and supersтιтions, eventually confronting the horrors from her own past.