The Daisy Chain (2008)

After the tragic death of their baby daughter, Martha and Tomas (Samantha Morton and Steven Mackintosh) relocate from London to the tiny coastal village in rural Ireland where Tomas was born. They move into his old family home, a small cottage overlooking the Atlantic. When their neighbours perish in a fire, the couple take in their orphaned daughter Daisy, a young autistic girl with complex learning needs. Some of the locals believe Daisy is a faerie changeling, and when several strange accidents and deaths occur in the area, fear takes root within the community, further ostracising Daisy and driving apart Martha and Tomas.

Written by Lauren Mackenzie and directed by Aisling Walsh, The Daisy Chain is a quietly haunting story of grief, otherness and the contagion of fear. It shares much in common with recent Irish horror titles, such as Aislínn Clarke’s Fréwaka, with its ambiguous use of folkloric beings, social commentary regarding rural communities left in the dust of the Dublin-centric Celtic Tiger boom, and the unrelenting power of old beliefs that continue to encroach upon daily life. A precursor to, and kindred spirit of, You Are Not My Mother and The Hole in the Ground, it was also one of the first Irish horror films to utilise the figure of the faerie changeling. According to old Irish folklore, changelings are faerie offspring left in place of abducted human children. Today we interpret belief in faerie changelings as historical ways of people trying to understand or explain unusual behaviour or appearance in their young children. Perceived differences in children, or sometimes even adults, attributed to changelings may have been used to explain the behaviour of individuals with mental or physical disabilities, or with developmental conditions such as autism, which affects how people communicate, learn and interact. Mackenzie's screenplay uses the figure of the changeling to explore ideas regarding perceptions of difference and ‘otherness’ in a small rural setting, and the effects of irrational fears based on old community superstitions and beliefs. The hinted at supernatural menace is rendered ambiguous throughout, establishing tension and underpinning the main theme of the dread of difference. With her restrained, naturalistic approach, director Walsh maintains enough of a whisper of otherworldly mystery to kindle a sense of foreboding, and by focusing on the human drama, ensures a strong emotional core to proceedings. 

There is a tradition in horror cinema and literature of identifying children as a source of terror and uneasiness – from Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw to Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive trilogy, notions of childhood innocence are eerily subverted and mined for unsettling effect. The Daisy Chain stands apart from such titles with its use of creepy Irish folklore, an approach grounded in realism, and its powerful central performances, particularly from Samantha Morton and Mhairi Anderson, who as Daisy, delivers an astounding performance. Sensitively written and hauntingly ambiguous, Mackenzie’s screenplay offers no easy answers in its exploration of societal fears of difference, of ‘the other’. 

Daisy’s young parents were superstitious, and there is a suggestion they may have mistreated and even abused her, believing her to be a changeling. For Martha and Tomas, there is no doubt that Daisy is autistic, and that she sees and experiences the world differently, and that her sheltered life and the recent traumatic events she's experienced, have rendered her wary of people. In a tiny rural community, her local school and education board are ill-equipped to help her, and as the adults in her life begin to suspect her otherworldliness - they use old wives’ tales and folklore to explain away her strange behaviour – it seems easier for them to believe that Daisy is an otherworldly imposter, who has replaced an abducted child and bewitched those around her, than to try and understand and accept a child with complex needs. Much of the real horror in The Daisy Chain stems from the depiction of a small community, specifically the adults within it, falling prey to apparent superstition and irrationality. Unless, of course, they are right about Daisy, and she is a supernatural imposter after all… 

Someone in the village notes that the only way to be rid of a changeling is to burn it in a fairy-ring on Halloween night, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, and that this action would force the faeries to return the human child they had abducted. When the burned remains of Daisy’s parents are found beside a fairy-thorn near their house, many within the community start to look at Daisy differently. Martha’s superstitious neighbour Sean (David Bradley) treats Daisy like a stray animal that keeps encroaching upon his property and seems increasingly alarmed by her presence. Her taunting of him can be dismissed as ‘naughty’ behaviour, a young girl acting up, oblivious to boundaries and societal expectations and etiquette. There are several moments, however, that hint at genuine menace, and the editing of the scene where Daisy repeatedly creeps up to Sean’s windows and laughs in at him, creates a jarring, threatening, disorientating affect. Sean claims Daisy has bewitched Martha and warns her never to say 'no' to the girl.  

Cinematographer Simon Kossoff captures the rugged, wild and often desolate beauty of the Irish landscape the story unfolds within (Achill Island, County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland). The imagery of these lonely landscapes attunes our attention to how the isolation of the community has enabled old beliefs to hold strong, even for Tomas, who moved away and lived in London for years. There’s a suggestion that the proximity between the land and the old ways is powerful and all-consuming. And, ultimately, inescapable. Before long Tomas starts to believe the whispers about Daisy, and her presence comes between him and Martha, who is rendered even more of an outsider because of her devotion to Daisy. Even Tomas’s sister Cat (Eva Birthistle from The Children and Wake Wood), initially welcoming and a voice of reason in the community, begins to become wary of the girl, and of Martha. In such a cut-off place, fear spreads easily, and the influence of the outside world remains weak against old ways and beliefs. Local parents keep their children home from school as they don’t want them near Daisy. Eventually the whole class falls ill with meningitis. Is this a cruel coincidence? Or has Daisy cursed them to illness for not playing with her? The film’s ambiguity is never maddening, it’s its strength. 

The haunting denouement offers no easy answers regarding Daisy’s suspected status as an otherworldly imposter, but it does pack a hefty, powerful punch, bringing to a close a gripping, creepy, troubling story that lingers like a softly whispered lament.