Folk horror has a peculiar problem. The deeper filmmakers dig into global mythologies for their monsters, the more they risk flattening complex cultural figures into disposable movie villains—stripped of context, reduced to glowing eyes and a body count. The Morrigan from Irish legend was never some bloodthirsty demon lurking in a cave. She was a war goddess tied to fate, sovereignty, and the protection of the land itself, a figure so layered that scholars still argue about what she actually represented.

Director Colum Eastwood’s The Morrigan reimagines all of that as a possession-hungry spirit hellbent on murder, which is the kind of creative liberty that’s going to make mythology purists wince. Fair enough. But if you can meet the film on its own terms, there’s a surprisingly sturdy chiller underneath that delivers better scares than its modest budget has any right to.

Archaeologist Fiona Scott (Saffron Burrows, Circle of Friends) has spent years specializing in Gaelic mythology, and she’s finally secured funding for a dig on remote Annan Island off the coast of Northern Ireland. The catch—because there’s always a catch—is that her sleazy boss Jonathan (Jonathan Forbes) insists on tagging along to claim credit for whatever they find. Fiona brings her rebellious teenage daughter Lily (Emily Flain), freshly expelled from boarding school and radiating the kind of adolescent fury that makes every room smell like teen spirit.

They arrive to discover Jonathan and his intern Conor (Michael Shea, Drop) have already started excavating without them. Staying at an inn run by handsome, intense Malachy (Toby Stephens, Die Another Day) and his son Sean (Art Parkinson, San Andreas), the group unearths an ancient casket that should have stayed buried. Lily—angry, isolated, drowning her boredom in stolen vodka—becomes drawn to whatever lies inside, and before long, the vengeful spirit of the Morrigan is loose, possessing the teenager and turning the island into a cage for the others.

Eastwood clearly stretched every penny of his budget, and honestly, it shows in the best possible way. Shot entirely on location in Northern Ireland, the film leans hard into weathered stone, claustrophobic caves, and the kind of naturally eerie landscapes that don’t need a filter to feel haunted. The cave sequences are where the film really finds its nerve—there’s something primal about watching characters squeeze through rock in the dark, all that weight pressing down, and Eastwood milks it for every drop of tension.

Cinematographer Robert Binnall captures some genuinely striking imagery in these moments, though the movie is often so dark elsewhere that it becomes difficult to tell what’s happening or even who’s on screen. This might have been intentional, but too often it just feels like a lighting problem that nobody caught until the editing bay, when it was already too late to fix.

The cast exceeds expectations for indie horror by a comfortable margin. Burrows starts playing Fiona with the same confident authority she brought to Deep Blue Sea, then gradually reveals a softer, less assured version of that character—a woman trying to step out from under her boss’s shadow while holding her fractured relationship with her daughter together. Forbes makes Jonathan appropriately slimy, predatory in ways that extend beyond just academic theft, and his later advances toward Lily land with genuine discomfort.

Flain handles the heavy lifting once possession kicks in, balancing teenage petulance with something far more sinister and committing physically in ways that sell the transformation. There is, however, an egregious nude scene involving her character that feels completely out of step with the rest of the film—especially jarring in a story that reads (at least to me) as being about women reclaiming power from patriarchal oppression. It’s a misstep that undercuts the film’s better instincts.

James Cosmo (My Sailor, My Love) plays Father Francis, Malachy’s brother (I thought for a stretch they were father and son) who actually understands the mythology and knows how to fight back, steadying the whole film. He doesn’t need to raise his voice to command a scene, and that’s exactly what the film needs when things start falling apart. Stephens is solid as the constant voice of caution, though playing the lone voice of dissent is pretty thankless. Still, the son of the late Dame Maggie Smith knows how to navigate around these roadblocks to keep the character from stalling out.

Parkinson and Shea, as the two younger men in the ensemble, are so interchangeable that I genuinely lost track of who was who more than once—they function more as furniture for the central characters than as people in their own right. Antonia Campbell-Hughes (It Is in Us All), meanwhile, brings excellent physicality to the ancient Morrigan in the prologue, and her presence lingers through the film even when she’s not directly on screen.

Production designer Patrick Creighton makes smart use of found locations rather than built sets, which speaks to budget limitations but also gives the film a texture that reads as authentic. The practical effects are surprisingly effective—body horror moments feel tactile, and when the Morrigan’s glowing eyes stare out from the darkness, it’s genuinely chilling.

The CGI is another story. Most of it passes muster, but the moment snakes enter the picture, the illusion crumbles in a way that’s hard to unsee. James Everett’s score blends traditional Irish music with modern horror sensibilities nicely, though it occasionally loops into repetition when it should be building.

The film starts strong but loses some of its footing in the third act, dragging just enough to make you wonder how it’s all going to wrap up. The emotional conclusion is satisfying when it arrives, but a last-minute twist lands more confusing than clever, like a sentence that doesn’t quite finish its thought.

The Morrigan isn’t reinventing folk horror, and its treatment of Irish mythology as raw material for a monster movie will rub some viewers the wrong way—understandably so. But there’s enough atmosphere, enough commitment from its cast, and enough well-timed scares to make it worthwhile. It’s the kind of film that’s proof that a strong sense of place and actors who actually care can elevate material which might have been forgettable in less capable hands.