Dia De Los Muertos or the Day of the dead is a Mexican holiday that honors those who are no longer with us.
Here in Dublin several events celebrated the occasion.
The City covered the different events and explained what the occasion is all about.
Tag: Halloween
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Macnas Parade – Photo Collage
By Elio Bonelli
The Macnas Parade: Cnámha La Loba took place on the streets of Dublin for the first time since 2019 as part of this year’s Bram Stoker festival.
The festival, which is now in its tenth year, celebrates the life and work one of Ireland’s most beloved and iconic writers.
This festival was produced by Schweppe Curtis Nunn and brought to life by Dublin City Council.
One of the highlights of this festival was the Macnas Parade which drew in thousands of spectators despite the rainy weather.
The parade, which was directed by James Riordan, tells the story of La Loba, a wild wolf-woman, who wanders the world collecting bones and preserving that which is in danger of being lost to the world.
It is said that, as darkness falls, she prowls the streets along Lough Corrib, singing the bones – or “cnámha” in Irish – back to life by the light of the moon.
The parade started at 7pm in Moore Street, turned onto Henry Street and travelled up to Mary Street, then turned right onto Capel Street, then left onto Little Britain Street and left again to finish on Halston Street. The parade lasted just over an hour.
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Bram Stoker Fest will scare you through your screen this Halloween
Spooky Season is upon us, but it’s lockdown… there’s nothing to do right? WRONG! Bram Stoker fest is offering up deadly thrills for those brave enough this Halloween weekend. Megan O’Brien chatted to the directors of the festival about what’s in store this year.
Bram Stoker Festival 2020 (1) – Sarah Joyce, Karen Hurley, Sally McGowan & Robyn McGowan Like so many other arts and cultural events in 2020, Bram Stoker Fest had to change its model this year owing to the restrictions, but they don’t necessarily consider themselves to be a virtual festival. “While you’ll find out about a lot of it through our website, most of the programme is interactive, participatory and involves activity on the side of the audience,” said co-director of the festival, Tom Lawlor.
Lawlor said that they decided back in summer to plan the festival so that it could go ahead under any level of restrictions due to the level of uncertainty we’re living with now. “Once we decided the programme would be primarily delivered in people’s homes, it made those challenges real opportunities to present new experiences delivered in new ways – for instance, our long association with Macnas, who would typically present a parade to close the festival, has become Macnas At Home – a series of videos teaching kids how to make their own Macnas magic this Halloween.”
Bram Stoker Festival 2020 (5) – Melissa Carton, Carl Moore, Eric Moore & Alice Moore Maria Schweppe, who co-directs the festival alongside Lawlor said: “In a year where many events have been postponed or cancelled, we’re thrilled to present a programme for Bram Stoker Festival which brings adventure into people’s homes.”
There’s plenty to thrill people of all ages this year. One of the highlights this year is ‘ETERNAL’, for adults only, it’s a 20-minute immersive audio experience designed for one person to listen to alone in their bed. It explores the quandary of eternal life and wonders what price you might pay to achieve it! It uses binaural sounds to play tricks on your mind and get under your skin. “In Darkfield, the company behind ETERNAL, are world leaders in binaural sound experiences, which position the audience in the centre of an unfolding narrative,” explained Lawlor. “We approached them to see if they could develop a show specifically for the festival and it happened to tie in with the work they were already doing.”
Bram Stoker Festival 2020 (2) – Ronan Hodson Another element of this year’s festival is ‘Curse Hunters’. An interactive adventure game that is played through your phone, there is a series of interactive tasks, puzzles and challenges all that children will have to solve to save the universe from a spooky curse.
Another horrifying highlight of the festival this year will be the Irish premiere of ‘I AM NOT LEGEND’. A work of horror film art by Andrea Mastrovito, an Italian artist working in New York, it was created during the pandemic. It will be accompanied by a soundtrack from Irish composers Matthew Nolan and Stephen Shannon, it’s a “radical reinterpretation of George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead and will be an “action-packed, heart-stopper for anyone looking for Halloween thrills.”
There will be many other events running throughout the festival including an online streaming of Dracula’s Disco for little zombies and ghosts, a dedicated edition of Donal Fallon’s Three Castles Burning podcast, a remastered version of the RTÉ Players production of Dracula and a compelling and informative audio-visual presentation from Dacre Stoker, the great-grand-nephew of Bram Stoker.
The festival will run from the 30th of October to the 2nd of November. Most of the events are free with ticketed ones costing €6. You can sink your teeth into the full festival programme at www.bramstokerfestival.com.
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Fun Place – top tips for a safe and spooky Halloween
This Halloween certainly won’t be like any other, with Covid-19 restrictions limiting the number of people we can visit and the events we can attend. Fun Place has been supplying spooky costumes in Dublin for 40 years now. Eibhin Kavanagh talked to owner Shay Howlin about how Fun Place has been getting on at what would usually be a very busy time of year for them – as well as some tips for a safe and spooky Halloween.
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Dark Dublin reveals the city’s horrifying history
The Dark Dublin walking tour leads participants around the city to hear gory tales of times past. Rebecca Daly spoke to its guide Ciaran Behan about the spooky history these locations hold.
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New Irish horror series Shudder Street to premier next week
Shudder Street, a new horror webseries, is coming to a screen near you next week. Erica Carter talked through the inspirations behind the new series with writer and director Seán Donohoe and producer Orlagh Doherty.
Still from episode ‘Exorcism’. Image courtesy of Shudder Street. Shudder Street is a new anthology-horror series set in Dublin, due to premiere next week. There will be four different episodes, each set in a different house on the same street. As the series goes on, we’ll soon see each different plot connect to one another. Donohoe revealed where he got the idea for Shudder Street from:
“I took a little inspiration from the British anthology series Inside No. 9, that tells a different standalone story every week, each set in their own singular location,” he said. “That gave me the idea to confine each segment of Shudder Street to its own individual house.
Donohoe wanted to tell different, standalone stories due to the freedom to explore different subgenres and ideas, but liked the idea of connecting them all with one overarching narrative. “It made location scouting a breeze as we were working with virtually no money, but also presented us with certain limitations that we had to work around. It was a learning curve for all of us, but I think it worked out well for the most part!”
Doherty came on board after the original script was written, and really enjoys the idea of an Ireland-based horror series. “It’s a different type of horror than a lot of series I’ve seen, the colloquial, everyday language used really makes it,” she said. “I think that having Irish slang in this really brings a different element to it. Definitely a great success!”
“We are a country with such a morbid history and folklore, sure we’re the birthplace of Dracula, Carmilla, and Dorian Grey for God’s sake!”
The idea of an Irish series in particular was incredibly important to Donohoe too: “I wanted to make a horror project that was distinctly Irish,” he said. “Not so much in the sense that there’s faeries and banshees running around the place, but more so in a colloquial sense.
“I wanted to take these common horror conventions and tropes but set them in a world that was familiar and close to home, in this case suburban Dublin. I wanted these characters to speak in a way similar to how myself and the people around me speak. I feel like some Irish media can feel very Americanised and I wanted to avoid that with Shudder Street. For the most part I think we succeeded!”
“I feel like Ireland has never really took off in the world of horror cinema the way that the UK or The States have,” he explained. “It’s unusual because we are a country with such a morbid history and folklore, sure we’re the birthplace of Dracula, Carmilla, and Dorian Grey for God’s sake!”
Image courtesy of Shudder Street. Doherty is delighted that Shudder Street has now come together and is finally ready to be shown to the public, after almost two years in the making. “Seeing a vision on paper and getting it on screen is something I find so exciting to be honest,” she gushed. “It involved a lot of planning, we got a great casting director to come on board and we just set goals each week to get little things accomplished, such as locations and crew.
“We just dealt with things as they came, and it all worked out. Seán and I originally started editing the script in January 2019, started filming around April that year and finished filming in May 2019. Post production has been the longest process though. Because it was a zero budget production we had to try to adapt to our cast and crew’s availability and time table so we didn’t have a set deadline for anything.”
Due to filming taking place last year, Shudder Street luckily didn’t run into any Covid-19 related production issues, although the crew are sad that they can’t celebrate. “In an alternate covid-free world, there would definitely be a Halloween Shudder Street Spookapalooza!” laughed Donohoe.
Shudder Street will be available to view on YouTube from Tuesday the 20th of October.
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Halloween returns the series to its roots with a chilling new installment
Michael Myers is back, and he’s as bloodthirsty as ever. The highly-anticipated addition to the Halloween series sees the triumphant return of the slasher mainstay.
It has been forty years since audiences were left gasping for air at the sight of the masked man on a murderous rampage. In the time since Myers first graced our screens, there has been a total of nine sequels in the now iconic franchise. The latest offering, directed by David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express), ignores the previous timeline and acts as a direct sequel to the 1978 original with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode.
Michael Myers is back to his murderous best in the 2018 sequel // UniversalPictures.ie The film opens with a pair of investigative journalists approaching Myers at the mental rehabilitation facility he’s been held in for the past four decades. Following a chilling scene in the prison, a gruesome series of events free him, which subsequently results in Myers donning the iconic mask.
Following years of paranoia, predicting Myers’ eventual return, Laurie has spent her time fortifying her house into some sort of bunker while raising – and training – her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), in preparation for the jumpsuit-clad killer.
Growing tired of her mother’s actions, Karen sets off to live a normal life with husband Ray (Toby Huss) and daughter Karen (Allyson Matichak), away from the memory of Myers and his murderous rampage 40 years ago.
What follows is a gory, unnerving, and often, surprisingly charming slasher film. It has everything the viewer would want and expect from Myers, including gruesome deaths, spine-tingling tension and a grandstand finish.
Halloween delivers on all fronts, in a time when horror titles have become more silly than scary, all the while paying homage to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic that originally gained the adoration of audiences worldwide.
Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her legendary role as Laurie, and couldn’t wait to correct the distorted Halloween timeline // UniversalPictures.ie -
The Haunting of Hill House: A fresh take on a well worn genre
With Halloween swiftly approaching, Netflix, much to the delight of horror fans, has continued to update its library with films and TV shows from the ghastly genre.
The latest addition, The Haunting of Hill House, has already generated a bevy of impressive reviews, with some reaching 91% amongst film critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a 5/5 rating on Roger Ebert. The ladbible even somewhat flimsily claimed that the show “has proven so scary that people are saying they’ve been vomiting, close to passing out and unable to sleep.” The show itself has proven that to be successful, it’s rewarding to take a different approach to the horror genre.
Director Mike Flanagan has taken the same approach that successful modern day horror films (Get Out, Hereditary, The Babadook) have gone with, focusing on the human trauma and skeletons in the closet, instead of cheap scares and gore, though that is not to say the show doesn’t stray away from them entirely.
Netflix’s adaptation of the horror classic has truly set the tone for this year’s festivities // Netflix Featuring ten episodes, all differing in length, the show centres around a family who have moved into an isolated house, with the intention of doing it up and selling it for a profit. It doesn’t take long for things to go horribly wrong, as they all begin to be individually affected by malevolent forces that dwell within.
The family consists of five young children and two parents, with the show jumping back and forth in time, elaborating on the impact the events had on them.
What is most effective about the show, however, is the themes that it explores. Inherited mental illness, addiction, and generational trauma are right at the forefront of the series. The first episode acts as the building block for the show, introducing the plot, characters, and how close they are, both in the past and present. The show then uses five episodes, each dedicated to a member of the Crain family, and how their own unique experience has haunted them.
What truly stands out about The Haunting of Hill House is its production. Some of the shots linking past and present are truly outstanding and episode six epitomises this, with a magnificent marriage of beautiful shots and masterful acting on show.
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Macnas Festival 2017
Cara Croke, Alison Egan & Chris Kelly headed along to Macnas Festival on October 30th to see what the parade entailed.
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Face your fears at Farmaphobia
Looking for one last scare this Bank Holiday weekend? Get yourself down to Ireland’s number one Halloween attraction Farmaphobia before it closes for another year on November 1st.
Based in Causey Farm in Co.Meath, Farmaphobia consists of a number of spooky attractions constructed on a traditional farm. The farmhouse, buildings and fields are all transformed into terrifying experiences for just one month each year.
The Field of Screams at Farmaphobia When booking your trip to Farmaphobia you have the option to choose between a scream pass and an X-scream pass. The scream pass price ranges from €18 to €20 and gives you access to three of five haunts. The X-scream pass price ranges between €27 and €32 and allows you to have access to all five haunts the farm has to offer.
Myself and four other reporters for The City visited three of the five haunts on Thursday night and this is how we got on.
The screams from the attractions could be heard from the moment we left the car and entered the farm. Scattered around the grounds were scary decorations and props, such as bonfires, guillotines and even a life sized Georgie from It, complete with his red balloon and severed arm.
Life size Georgie from Stephen King’s IT Our scream passes gave us access to three haunts. On arrival we were given a wristband that was marked each time we entered a haunt, ensuring each visitor could only enter once.
Vamporium and Mutation Morgue are set up like your standard haunted house, complete with dark rooms, small spaces to crawl through and terrifying actors who aren’t afraid to get up close and personal. To enter the Mutation Morgue, each visitor is put into a drawer that resembles a morgue refrigerator – an aspect of the experience that I can imagine would not be enjoyable if you’re claustrophobic.
Morgue trays are not for the claustrophobic What seemed to be the main attraction that everyone was talking about was the Field of Screams. This was the only attraction that we had to queue up for, meaning it is one of the most popular attractions Farmaphobia has to offer. Serving Stephen King’s Children of the Corn vibes, the Field of Screams is a maze cut into a field of corn that you have to stumble around in the dark in whilst being chased by crazy rednecks and lumberjacks with chainsaws. Be prepared to get dirty as even on a dry night we stumbled out of the field with mud up to our ankles.
The three attractions take roughly an hour to complete, but then you can explore the farm, get some food and take pictures with some of the terrifyingly brilliant decorations. With roughly a ninety minute drive between Dublin’s city centre and Causey Farm, Farmaphobia is definitely worth a visit if you’re looking to be truly frightened this Halloween.
City.ie reporter Killian Dowling at Farmaphobia
You can get your tickets at http://www.farmaphobia.ie
By Cara Croke
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