Nights of Horror: All You Need Is Death (2023)

All You Need Is Death (2023, Ireland)

All You Need Is Death came recommended from a folk horror group I’m in, and the premise was too intriguing to ignore: A young couple of folk music archivists learn of an ancient song known only by one woman and end up on a darker path than they bargained for.

Anna and Aleks are in the game of hunting down old folk songs, writing them down and recording them. As a fan of the 2000 film Songcatcher (about a musicologist collecting folk songs in early 1900s Appalachia, plus lesbians), the books of John Hornor Jacobs, and the podcast The Magnus Archives, I knew this was going to be right up my alley.

Fuck if it didn’t try.

Our young couple is in the process of paying an old peepaw to listen to his version of a song when he recommends they seek out an old woman upcountry who knows ancient songs nobody else knows. They make note of this before meeting up with another old man, this time a wealthy wheelchair-bound eccentric who doesn’t want to buy their recording of the other guy’s song cause it’s not unique or special enough.

They decide to step up their game by attending a seminar given by Agnes, a shady woman who stresses the value of these ancient and powerful songs, leading us, the audience, to believe that these songs are more than songs. They’re magical rituals, and the singing of them is a way of preserving magic in the same way you never let the Olympic torch go out. And as we all know, there are always going to be people who will pay top dollar to be the holders of something nobody else has. Tell me more about your shady organization! (I’d ask if I could join and just be a silly song farm for them, but I‘m pretty sure the songs they want have to have been sung for hundreds if not thousands of years to qualify.)

Okay I’m in, where is this other lady with the ancient songs, Rita Concannon?

Anna has to sweet talk someone into showing them the way to Rita’s house. Aleks would do it but he’s got a thick unplaceable (Russian?) accent and a stutter. One wonders how Anna, a singer with an echoic memory, ended up with him, but here’s the thing, he’s like Hugh Grant in the 90s hot. Just… just a real stunner. He’s so hot I didn’t even notice the stutter til he was doing anti-stutter exercises in the car, including the one the fat boy does in IT. You know, the one where “amidst the mists and fiercest frosts, with barest wrists, and stoutest boasts, he thrusts his fists against the posts, and still insists he sees the ghosts.” It’s a classic. (My most insincere apologies to anyone I’ve ever made use this as our de-escalation phrase in a BDSM session. You’re lucky I didn’t give you Gilbert and Sullivan’s “To sit in solemn silence” patter. But honestly, if I’m making you memorize patter songs and tongue twisters as our safe words, that means I really enjoy playing with you and have faith that you’re capable.)

Agnes is already there when we reach the home of Rita Concannon, who is shit-faced and hiding in a wardrobe. It’s clear Agnes and Rita have met before, probably introduced by Rita’s mother, Maggie, who died some years ago.

Rita says she knows the song they’re looking for, one that was passed down from mother to daughter since before the Irish language existed. She has no daughter to pass it to, but Anna can hear it, since she’s a good Irish girl. Aleks’ fine ass has to leave, it ain’t for men’s ears. Anna promises not to record the song and removes the batteries from her machines, unplugging everything. Rita sings the song, in a language older than Irish, a crushing wail of a heartbreaker, about an old king who loved a young maid, and the curse he placed upon her, the child she bore out of wedlock, and the young man who sired it. The song has no title, but if it did, it might be “Love is a knife with a blade for a handle.” Brutal.

What follows is us realizing that Agnes has secretly recorded the song, as evidenced by her hurried departure, Aleks asking if Anna remembers it all, and she does her best to record herself singing it from memory. They meet up with Agnes, who plays her firsthand recording of Rita singing it.

“I promised her,” Anna says.

“I didn’t,” Agnes replies.

Back at the Concannon house, Rita is stumbling drunk, while dark demonic shadows float around and close in on her.

Cut to the son Rita couldn’t pass the song down to, Breezeblock, working his shitty job as a puppeteer, with a scary hand-painted kidnapper van. He comes home to find his mother violently murdered, thus kickstarting a cavalcade of fuckery, magic, self-made eunuchs, murder, music, and badly accented dirty talk from disgusting sex monsters that kept me saying “Alright I’ll allow it,” leading to an ending so confusing it almost ruined the entire film. It’s taken two viewings and 36 hours of turning it over in my head to figure out what the fuck actually happened. I’m not mad at it, obviously, because I’m talking about it.

All You Need Is Death is available on Amazon Prime.