Whatever the culture, whichever the hemisphere, folk horror tends to teach viewers the same message: Respect the old world, or the old world will bite you on the ass. Irish folk horror distinguishes itself especially by measuring the tragic toll levied on the poor schmucks who shrug off their ancient and rich cultural heritage, then regret their neglect when the heritage comes calling. The “horror” part is self-evident, baked into visitations from goblins and faeries and banshees and other bogeyman, so the “abiding woe” receives special emphasis. There’s little more Irish than a story that concludes in its protagonist’s seismic ruin; on the Emerald Isle, misery loves company.
In Adam and Skye Mann’s A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree, this is especially true: The film’s lead, Padraig (James Healy-Meaney), isn’t much for carpentry or woodworking, and yet he seeks out a carpenter, John (Gerry Wade), and pays him handsomely for the privilege of his tutelage and muted bemusement. Padraig has no skill. John has little patience. But John takes Padraig on, instructing him in the ways of properly harvesting and treating elm wood, and slowly, bit by bit, turning it into a coffin, for reasons only Padraig can appreciate—not that he speaks much about his past or present anyway. He’s a mollusk. But he’s a mollusk with a purpose, and enough guilt, shame and contrasting insouciance to fill a grave, and he sets about realizing his purpose with stoic determination. All the while, John watches, and worries.
Concern, not stark bedwetting terror, is the film’s soul, though Padraig’s taciturn refusal to expand on the circumstances leading up to his arrival at John’s door throws the Manns’ narrative into anxious territory. Compared to its peers in contemporary Irish folk horror—The Hallow, Unwelcome, The Hole in the Ground, Mandrake, Wake Wood—A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree reads as horror adjacent; there are no monsters to speak of, a scant few moments of choking fear, and nary a drop of blood spilled in its 75 minutes. In their stead is the sense of overwhelming loss. Padraig’s grief is so absolute that it becomes the film’s atmosphere, no matter the Manns’ decision to withhold the details of his wife Aoibheann’s (Jordon-Dion Scanlon) passing. It is implied that Padraig bears responsibility for her fate, but how much, to what degree, is left unspoken. All that exists of her is the unbearable despair Padraig exhales with every breath.
A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree tilts on an axis with Padraig on one end, and John’s observations of him in the throes of antisocial bereavement on the other. Aoibheann is already in the ground, but Padraig wants to make a coffin for her anyway, which is as sure a sign of his unsound mind as his ambivalence over pot still whiskey—“liquid gold,” John says in his quiet, empathetic way. What’s startling about A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree isn’t the gradual reveal of supernatural powers embedded in the woods surrounding John’s home and workshop; every town in all the counties in all of Ireland has one tale or another about banshees prowling old abandoned barns, or kelpies lurking in old loughs and ponds. This kind of story is intrinsic to the film’s traditions and background. It’s Padraig who haunts the narrative, more a ghost than any actual ghost the Manns could install as a subsidiary character.
Healy-Meaney takes the role right up to the edge of menace, casting Padraig as both dreadful in his ambiguity and broken by the death of his wife. As his foil, Wade performs John as a witness to Padraig’s torment, which stirs in him a desperation that defies that old world serving as the bedrock for folk horror cinema across traditions and around the globe. What A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree observes through the arc of Padraig’s self-made downfall, opaquely reflected in a story told by the unvarnished local barkeep, Liam (M.J. Sullivan), is a two-pronged helplessness: John can’t stop Padraig from invoking fae rituals to reunite with Aoibheann’s spirit, any more than Padraig can stop himself.
Black-and-white photography seems a contradictory choice for a movie about lapses in judgment and morality, sins that reside in the gray area of human folly. (That’s according to how much the Manns let on about what shuffled Aoibheann from her mortal coil.) But A Guide to Becoming an Elm Tree’s aesthetic scheme casts Padraig’s troubled conscience into stark light, where Conor Tobin’s cinematography welds crisp detail with spooky framing. The film isn’t a scare-a-minute affair. It’s thick with foreboding and heartache, and that’s the most Irish that Irish cinema gets.
Directors: Adam Mann, Skye Mann
Writers: Adam Mann, Skye Mann
Starring: James Healey-Meaney, Gerry Wade, M.J. Sullivan, Jordon-Dion Scanlon
Release Date: September 21, 2023 (Fantastic Fest)
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.