The Banshees of Inisherin

The story of a seemingly inconsequential feud that spins wildly out of control. A rocky coastal path, pony-drawn traps, a rainbow in the sky and Colin Farrell striding along with a top o’ the morning spring in his step…

This could be the corniest kind of Hollywood Irish fantasy, if The Banshees Of Inisherin wasn’t written and directed by Martin McDonagh, whose acclaimed stage plays and films (including In Bruges and 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri) were rightly celebrated for their mischievous and very dark irony. Banshees starts with a light comic touch as a rural character farce, but then gets progressively darker and more macabre, with resonant echoes of modern Irish history hovering off-screen and clouds of Beckettian despair hanging overhead.