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Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

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Mandrake (2022)

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Mandrake tells of probation officer Cathy Madden (Deirdre Mullins), who is assigned to help with the rehabilitation of recently released ‘Bloody’ Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty), who had been incarcerated years prior for the murder of her abusive husband. Rumours have long swirled in the local area concerning Mary’s dabbling in witchcraft and involvement in cases of missing children. No sooner has she been released, than the bodies of several local children are found in the woods near her farmhouse. As Cathy and local police delve deeper, the veil between real and imagined starts to fray and Cathy is drawn into a dark world of occult ritualism and blood sacrifice. Directed by Lynne Davison and written by Matt Harvey, Mandrake is a delicious slice of witchy, Northern Irish folk horror, dripping with atmosphere and arcane lore. While Irish horror is having a moment right now, with acclaimed titles such as Aislinn Clarke’s Fréwaka and Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother mining rich and cr...
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The Ugly Stepsister (2025)

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Written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister filters the fairy tale of Cinderella through a feminist body-horror lens to lambast the impossible standards women are held to – both in this world and in folkloric fantasy worlds of make-believe. It follows Elvira (Lea Myren), a shy, awkward young woman who is driven by her mother, societal pressures, and by jealousy of her beautiful stepsister, to undergo gruesome cosmetic surgeries to make herself beautiful, win the heart of the prince and marry into wealth. Blichfeldt has created a daring work that blasts open the misogyny inherent in many literary fairy tales, revealing them to be a means of containing and controlling young women. Her screenplay ensures audiences glimpse the full horror of how glass slippers become glass ceilings, as female ambitions are forcibly limited, dreams corralled and bodies cruelly transformed. The film is laced with blood-dark humour as Blichfeldt sets about satirising and carving up patriar...
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Vinyan: Lost Souls

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2008 Dir. Fabrice Du Welz The lives of Jeanne and Paul Bellmer (Emmanuelle Béart and Rufus Sewell) are thrown into chaos when they think they see their son, thought drowned in the Southeast Asia tsunami in 2004, in a film they watch about orphans living in the jungles of Burma. They set off into an impenetrable heart of darkness in search of an elusive and perhaps unattainable truth, aided only by human traffickers who are intent on exploiting their heartache. Stranded in the middle of a strange and hostile country, the couple are besieged by a band of feral children and begin to lose sight of the hope they once so desperately clung to. ‘When someone dies a horrible death, their spirit becomes confused and angry. It becomes…Vinyan.’ Vinyan unfolds as a strange reflection of Don’t Look Now in its exploration of a couple’s grief, denial, hope and obsession as they try to come to terms with the death of their child. The story tracks Jeanne and Paul’s personal descent into the ma...
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