Film Reviews

The Daisy Chain

• Rating:
• Director: Aisling Walsh
• Starring: Samantha Morton
• Details: Ireland/UK / 89mins (15A).

Coming fast on the heels of Case 39 and Orphan, this Irish horror looks the business but sadly is a re-thread of the spooky kid movie, and fails to bring anything fresh to the table. Despite that, The Daisy Chain should be commended for realising that the West of Ireland is an excellent setting for a horror.
After suffering the death of their baby daughter, the heavily pregnant Martha (Morton) moves with her Irish husband, Tomas (Mackintosh), to the West of Ireland to start afresh. Moving into Tomas's childhood home, the couple find that they have two sets of neighbours: a young couple with an autistic child, Daisy (Anderson), and a grumpy old man in Sean (David Bradley), who seems to be deathly afraid of the young girl. When the young couple mysteriously die in a fire, Martha and Tomas take Daisy in while waiting for Social Services to arrange a foster family. However, as 'accidents' continue to happen, Tomas begins to suspect that Sean is right - that Daisy is one kid you don't want to play with.
Director Aisling Walsh (in her follow up to Song For A Raggy Boy) shoots the countryside with a beautiful eeriness. The blue-grey skyline is the backdrop for old, dying trees - there's a sense of foreboding to her wide shots and they set up the creepy tone nicely. It's such a shame the script fails to live up to them.
That The Daisy Chain is derivative of so many spooky kids movies is the catalyst in its downfall, but there are other elements of the story that fail to gel too. The major sticking point is that it all happens too soon. There is little build up before Daisy is presented as something otherworldly; Tomas and Martha aren't five minutes in the house before Sean is throwing stones at Daisy, shouting 'away wit ya' and blessing himself when she's near. Writer Lauren Mackenzie would have been better off taking some time to build up the superstitious nature of the locals, to ease the believability of the story. Where Mackenzie succeeds is in making Martha's affection for Daisy, and her rejection of the locals' rumours that the girl isn't human, realistic by including the death of her previous child. Not at lot about The Daisy Chain is believable, but that is.
The cast can't be faulted - Morton turns in another dependable turn while the underrated Mackintosh delivers a sturdy performance. Hats off to newcomer Mhairi Anderson who strikes a nice balance between cute and menacing. Walsh knows how to shoot her too - her close ups accentuate the girl's sometimes intimidating eyes.

Review by Gavin Burke