The provenance of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula has very nearly led to warfare down through the years: every researcher and author with an axe to grind has shown themselves willing to fight over their take on Stoker’s inspiration, and to what extent he drew upon Transylvanian history and folklore. Well, it may complicate matters, but what if he drew some inspiration from a lot closer to home? Irish folklore has its own bloodthirsty revenants, and in Boys From County Hell (2020) this is used to great effect, generating a fresh-feeling vampire mythos which works very well as a horror comedy.
So it seems that Stoker may have picked up some pointers from visiting the Six Mile Hill area, which boasts a rumoured vampire grave – a cairn which locals claim contains the body of Abhartach, a nobleman who came back from the dead to demand blood from the locals. Only pinioning him underneath heavy stones stopped him from returning over and over. Or at least that’s the legend: locals Eugene (Jack Rowan), Claire (Louisa Harland), SP (Michael Hough) and William (Fra Fee) couldn’t care less, other than their local is a hokey place called The Stoker, and they get to wind up tourists who are in town to visit the grave. Perhaps it’s fair to say they’d have liked Stoker to have given their kip of a town a bit more credit, but there we go.
Life would no doubt have ticked along the same, but Eugene – who’s a little averse to hard graft, shall we say – is asked (really ‘told’) by his father Francie (Nigel O’Neill) to work with him in a big upcoming construction job, completing the local by-pass. This new road is a controversial one, already hated by the locals, as it’s scheduled to cut straight across the cairn, devastating what little tourist trade they have and putting William’s family off their land too. Eugene is none too pleased either, but he wants to prove himself, so he’s the one who takes it upon himself to knock over the ancient cairn.
You don’t need me to tell you that Bad Things Happen as a result. You can work out the basic premise of Boys From County Hell, but what remains to be seen is how the next part of the journey gets handled. Well, it all starts with a nightwatchman who disappears from the site, the mysterious replacement of the cairn, and then a tragic post-pub accident sends an already bizarre situation into freefall. The group of friends have to put all their effort into working out the strange rules and codes of the phenomena they encounter; refreshingly, it doesn’t just emulate the vampire lore we know from elsewhere, and making the most of this is one of the film’s strongest points. In common with last year’s Extra Ordinary (2019), Boys From County Hell is very good at natural, perfectly-pitched dialogue. It’s less about the overt jokes and more just the way these old friends generally speak to one another – irreverent and painfully honest, all whilst trying to make sense of what’s going on. The interaction between the characters makes the unfolding madness a lot more plausible than it might have been, as their respond in understandable ways, all whilst delivering some very, very funny lines. It also helps the dial the action up and down as needed, too.
The pace throughout the film is about right, never rushed or forced, despite the film giving itself a lot of work to do plot-wise. If anything, I was expecting a bigger, showier pay-off before the credits rolled, but all in all, I still enjoyed what was given and felt that it worked. Launching into new on-screen myth-building is no mean feat, but Boys From County Hell does enough to distinguish its own rules of the game here, with good excuses for gore and well-handled SFX.
Ultimately though, this is a film with heart, and its friendships and family ties come across very naturally throughout. With no sentimental excursions, you still get your character arcs and there’s plenty of human interest to get to grips with here. It’s just not waved under your nose in such a way which would detract from the madcap creature feature unfolding. As I’ve said many times, horror comedies are a risky business as it’s so easy to lose either the horror, or the comedy, but Boys From County Hell is a great laugh throughout, and a solid piece of entertainment.
Boys From County Hell screened at the Celluloid Screams Horror Festival 2020.