Bean Feasa
2022 · 17m · Ireland
Directed by Daniel Butler
Genres: drama, fantasy, horror
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
The skeptical daughter of a traditional healer in the Donegal Gaeltacht has her certainties challenged when she encounters one of 'the Good People'.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Butler's doing the folk-horror thing everyone and their cousin is doing now, but at least he resists the urge to make the Good People jump-scare fodder—there's actual restraint here, which is either admirable or boring depending on your patience for contemplation over provocation.
A film deeply conscious of its lineage to Irish mythology cinema and folk-horror tradition, executed with formal precision: the Gaeltacht setting isn't backdrop but text, the skeptic-daughter premise inverts expected beats, and the pacing trusts silence the way earlier generations of this form did.
Butler's restraint with the uncanny—the choice to keep the Good People shadowed and suggestive rather than revealed—does the heavy lifting, letting the daughter's disorientation become ours without relying on budget-breaking effects, which means everything lands on performance and sound design.