Grimmfest 2018 - The Devil's Doorway

Director: Aislinn Clarke

Cast: Lalor Roddy, Ciaran Flynn, Helena Bereen

Synopsis: In the fall of 1960, Father Thomas Riley and Father John Thornton were sent by the Vatican to investigate a miraculous event in an Irish home for 'fallen women', only to uncover something much more horrific...

Grimmfest say: A found-footage film about a couple of priests sent by the Vatican to investigate a possible miracle...

The bare-bones synopsis might suggest something akin to previous Grimmfest hit The Borderlands, but don't be fooled. You haven't seen anything like this before. The first found-footage period-piece, ostensibly compiled later from 16mm film footage recorded by one of the priests during the investigation. Offering both an icy study in religious hypocrisy and fanaticism, and a terrifying tale of madness and possession, it draws on some of the more horrific crimes committed by the Catholic Church in Ireland, such as the infamous Magdalene Laundries and in particular Tuam Orphanage in Galway, with its mass grave of children's bodies, to ground its narrative in chillingly plausible reality. Dealing intelligently with issues of faith and doubt, and with the ugly double-standards of Irish Catholicism, with regard to women and sexuality, this is a smart, suffocatingly claustrophobic, and genuinely troubling movie, that for once finds a good use fo the faux-authenticity and immediacy afforded by the found-footage subgenre. It all feels, disturbingly, very real.

What I'm Expecting: Found-footage films may have gone through a period of overuse – spawning an excess of unimaginative, and frankly, crap films – but that doesn't mean they can't be used to incredible efficacy; producing gems like Cloverfield, REC, and of course, The Blair Witch Project. These kinds of films can be undoubtedly tense and atmospheric in the right hands and that's what I would expect from The Devil's Doorway: a dark and gritty film with stark indictment of organised religion.