Fréwaka

Fréwaka is a horror film for adults, one that trades cheap jolts and gore for something far more unsettling: the horror of inherited trauma, abuse, and existential dread. Its atmosphere simmers like an unattended kettle on a stove, quietly building until it threatens to boil over.

At its core, the film grapples with the real-life atrocities of the Magdalene Laundries—state-sanctioned and Church-promoted institutions that systemically abused Irish women under the guise of morality. The generational trauma that followed is not just acknowledged but embedded into the film’s very structure, haunting every frame.

Layered with Irish folklore, Fréwaka draws on the idea of liminal spaces and sacred thresholds (birth, death, marriage) where the veil between worlds is thinnest. In these spaces, women are positioned as gatekeepers, burdened with witnessing and carrying the weight of both the living and the dead.

The narrative moves in slow, deliberate spurts before spiraling into a final act that is chilling, tragic, and deeply resonant. The two lead performances are understated but vital, moving, and grounding the film’s more preternatural elements and making its emotional weight all the more devastating.

Fréwaka isn’t just a spooky story—it’s an elegy for the silenced, and a confrontation with the systems that tried to erase them.