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Some small village in the Irish countryside: Young Niamh (Missy
Keating) has some problems at home, which is why she runs away. She's
however picked up by the neighbours Nat (Marcella Plunkett) and Lucas
(Padraic Delaney), friends of her parents, who see to it that she returns
home safely. Especially Nat has a soft spot for Niamh because she's the
same age as her own eldest daughter who has died from cancer several years
ago. And still, she is blind to the signs of abuse Niamh shows. The next
night, Niamh's parents and little brother are dead, killed by ... well it
looks as if it was home invaders, but actually it was some supernatural
power that had to do with Niamh and the pain she has experienced. After
the death of her family, Niamh is given to Nat and Lucas to take care of,
since there are no actual institutions in the village to deal with
something like this, and it's not adviseable to take the young girl out of
her natural enviroment. Niamh totally shuts down when it comes to
communicating with others in any meaningful way, especially with Nat and
Lucas, whose motives she constantly misinterprets based on her past
experiences. She however finds an empathic bond with two kids who are
abused by their own mother ... and who would have known, the mother
eventually dies in an incident similar to the one Niamh's parents have
died in, and Niamh was scene near the scene of the crime ... By and by,
Niamh freaks everyone out, but Nat makes every effort to see to it that
she is not treated as a freak and insists to have her invited to another
girl's birthday party, even if that girl has so far nothing but bullied
her. But Niamh has since the death of her parents found out that she
actually has ESP powers, and at the party, when she feels mistreated, she
causes a fire and almost makes the girls burn themselves ... The finale
sees Niamh and the two kids she has saved from their abusive mother lure
all the kids to the school to then collapse it over them, then they lure
Nat and Lucas to an abandoned building to brutally destroy them, standing
in for all adults ... A very creepy film, not only because it's
very well-made and uses its modest budget effects to the fullest effect,
but also because it does not (and makes it diffitult for the viewer to)
take sides: Sure, what the girl does is wrong, but there's a cause for her
fury, and she's too young to understand the subtleties of telling right
from wrong in cases like hers, and while Nat has only the best for her in
mind, she could have paid more attention to what's going on with her when
her parents were still alive and she didn't serve as daughter surrogate,
and she shouldn't have slapped her, too, when she lost her nerves. Now add
to this basic ambiguity a stringent screenplay, rather compelling lead performances,
atnospheric filmmaking as well as inventive gore sequences, and you've got yourself a
pretty creepy little film!
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