ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH - Mark Reviews Movies

All You Need Is Death, XYZ Films

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | April 10, 2024

Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) hunt for rare songs—the ones that have lasted for centuries or more and could be lost to time if people stop singing them. There's nothing noble about this pursuit, though. It's basically a matter of theft, because these two are musicians who want fame and success but don't want to put in the work of writing their own material.

That's the initial conceit of All You Need Is Death, from writer/director Paul Duane, and in case the clunky title doesn't make it clear, that premise doesn't last for long. Eventually, there's horror to be found in the history of one particular song.

Both of these are fine-enough ideas, although the moral and ethical dilemma of the couple's cultural plagiarism, as well as the potential consequences if one of the singers of those songs finds out what they're trying to do, seems full of potential. Instead, Duane takes the relatively safe route of this song unleashing some kind of supernatural curse or demonic presence upon anyone who isn't supposed to sing or even hear the tune does so.

It's not entirely clear what this threat is or, if it is some actual entity, why it's so protective of the song, but far be it from this critic to knock a supernatural horror movie for having a sense of mystery to it. There's an earned sense of mystery, though, and then, there's this hodgepodge of assorted ideas that too often comes across as Duane not being entirely certain what's happening or how his mythology works at any given moment.

That feeling starts before the horror elements even arrive. The story begins with a small-town Irish musician being interviewed by the police in the aftermath of whatever will end up happening by the end of the story. This character doesn't matter, except to introduce Anna, who's secretly recording one of the musician's gigs at a pub, and Aleks, who pretends to be a local offended by her covert recording. There's no logical reason for the ruse, since neither the singer nor anyone else in the bar cares about or notices what Anna is doing, so the only reason for her boyfriend to cause a scene is for the momentary surprise that they're actually partners in the scheme and love.

They start asking around about the real gems of folk songs, because there's at least one shadowy organization that's advising thieving musicians and/or looking for such tunes for their own unclear ends (maybe even two such groups, if a quick meeting with a black-market dealer of old songs who never returns is, as it seems, unconnected from the main one). Anna and Aleks hear a rumor of an older woman who knows songs along those lines, and after a local man brings the couple to the woman's home, the head of the odd organization Agnes (Catherine Siggins) is already there to hear Rita (Olwen Fouéré) sing.

She tells them that only the women are allowed to hear the song and Anna isn't allowed to record. Agnes does, though, and hearing the song starts a very silly process having to do with an ancient story of a peasant woman, the king who loved her, her lover, and the tragic, gruesome results.

Those are the broad strokes. The specifics have Anna searching for Aleks, who has run off with Agnes, and Anges and Aleks studying and translating the lyrics until they're apparently destined to live out the olden-times tragedy. Meanwhile, Rita's son Breezeblock (Nigel O'Neill) starts hunting the people who took his mother's song, resulting in her death at the hands of some ghostly, silhouetted creatures.

He's more than willing to leave the guy who only took Anna and Aleks to Rita's house to a violent end, but for some reason, he stops feeling vengeful the moment he even looks at the trio who are far more responsible for his mother's death than the poor guy who didn't even know what the three were up to. It's just bad luck, apparently, that he's around when the movie needs to better establish the demons that are mostly forgotten Duane decides which story he's actually telling.

In general, this is a fairly neat premise for a horror tale about the impact of tales of horror, featuring a couple of clever ideas. It's also a mess of a narrative for how many odd, irrelevant, or halted ideas the filmmaker attempts to fit into the material.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products