Panic Fest 2024 All You Need Is Death Review- Love Is A Horrifying Double-Edged Sword

Good Irish Horror uses the mysticism and hard-earned history of the land to weave compelling stories. There are movies that make you feel like you are a part of things more than they want to scare you. These films bewitch us with folklore and life truths best left whispered or not spoken at all. All You Need Is Death, premiering at Panic Fest 2024, is one of those sorts of films. Folklore, when done right, envelops you in what could be while holding you powerless to what is.

Written and directed by Paul Duane, All We Need Is Death is a stunning and tragic story about love so all-consuming it destroys everything it touches. Part Irish legend and clever ghost story, it weaves a spell from the initial screeching moments and doesn’t let up until the shocking, ambiguous ending. It leaves you breathless and caught in its web of ancient beings and forbidden songs.

Anna(Simone Collins) and Aleks(Charlie Maher) are a young couple searching for old Irish folk songs to sell. The older, more unknown, and intimate the variation, the better. In this strange world just adjacent to our own, ancient songs have become a commodity if you are clever enough to get them and rich enough to afford them. When the pair hears about a mysterious woman who has an ancient song, they run face-first into something they can’t imagine and never intended. They aren’t the only ones affected by forces they can’t imagine. A shadowy academic figure, Agnes(Catherine Siggins), who curates music for wealthy clients, beats Anna and Aleks to Rita Concannon’s(Olwen Fouéré of Halo, Mandy, and The Northman) house. Despite Rita making Aleks and Agnes leave before singing her song, their lives are forever changed.

Rita allows Anna to stay and tells her the song is in a language more ancient than Irish and is only passed from mother to daughter. It is forbidden to be written down, recorded, or sung to men. Rita sings this to Anna, knowing she is likely ending her life. Each time the song is sung, a piece of the singer goes with the listener. Unfortunately for Agnes and Aleks, who think they can commoditize the song through Anna’s memory, the song is as much a warning as a fable. If used the wrong way, the song unleashes a power they can’t imagine.

Words have potency. Any great storyteller, poet, or songwriter can attest. They can move us to tears or make our hearts swell with happiness. They can also conjure memories, good or bad, that live again, waiting to be set free. In All You Need Is Death, Rita’s song is passed down as oral history. It is a story and, as Anna later finds out, a memory of a cursed couple. A King once loved a woman so completely he did something unspeakable. His actions tainted everything around him and doomed the woman. Somehow, across time, Rita is the embodiment of that pain.

Her song is one of rage, despair, and soul-wrenching sadness. There is something wild and unbridled about the guttural song that shakes Anna and the viewer to the core. Thanks to a bombastic and emotive soundtrack by Ian Lynch, every moment is filled with dread. The singing is so soulful and, at times, visceral that you feel it rather than hear it. There is a reason this song was never recorded or written down. The power is too strong. To do so invites destruction from the inside out.

The cinematography is confident and ephemeral as it glides along the Irish countryside from one shadowy place to the next fog-heavy location. This place drips with the past and magic we shouldn’t mess with. Duane uses the melody and the beauty of the land to resonate with the viewer. It is the eternal hum of time and misery. A reminder that the past should stay there. Three-fourths of the way through, there is a cool creature reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. A final act transformation is as compelling as it is enigmatic.

All You Need Is Death feels like a future reality alongside our own, only minutes away from collapse, where something as universal and beautiful as music is exploited by forces both ordinary and extraordinary. It stands as a cautionary tale to value the here and now and heed warnings when they are offered. There are things that can never be owned, regardless of the desire to have them. Some prices are too high to pay, and the past should just die.

Find all our Panic Fest 2024 coverage here.