While I have forgotten the details of it since, I was lucky enough to see, and enjoy, the short film version of Boys From County Hell back in 2013 at the Dead By Dawn horror film festival. I remember it being fun, bloody, and entertainingly playful with a well-known horror archetype. I don't know why I never made time before now for the feature, but the main thing is that I have done so now.
Written and directed by Chris Baugh (who also helmed the superb Bad Day For The Cut), expanding on the story idea co-created with Brendan Mullin, this is a tale of two friends, Eugene (Jack Rowan) and William (Fra Fee), who are reacting in very different ways to the fact that nothing of interest ever happens in their small town. Tourists stop by now and again, interested in a local legend that apparently inspired Bram Stoker's most famous writing, but even that will become a rarity when a new bypass is built. And that bypass project will be headed up by Eugene's dad (Francis, played by Nigel O'Neill), which will make the pair of them about as popular as a hedgehog at a bouncy castle party. Despite the hostility towards them, Eugene and his dad, joined by Claire (Louisa Harland) and SP (Michael Hough), end up trying their best to keep the locals safe when it transpires that the local legend has returned. And is hungry.
While it's easy to recommend Boys From County Hell as a very enjoyable horror comedy, thanks to it delivering enough laughs and bloodshed in equal measure, it's important to note that it works as well as it does because of the central characters and the journey that we see them go on. Eugene and William are separated from one another in a way that leaves a painful hole too easily filled with guilt and recriminations, which is similar to the space always there between Eugene and his father. Claire doesn't have time for the men unable to see beyond their own insecurities and self-flagellation, but she soon shows that she has a determination and strength that makes her unlikely to stick around in a small town for too long, if she survives the dangerous night ahead.
Baugh takes time to set everything up in the first half hour, but does so while throwing in some minor scares and foreboding moments on the way to the more action-packed second half. It's a good move to start with a powerful and chilling scene before then hopping back in time to show how that moment eventually comes about, and it's also good to have one or two heavy emotional wallops that reverberate through the rest of the runtime.
Rowan makes a great lead, and works brilliantly with absolutely everyone around him. Fee and Harland both get good moments, Hough is responsible for a few of the funniest lines, and O'Neill has fun playing someone so amusingly cold and inconsiderate for most of his screentime. John Lynch and Andrea Irvine are welcome additions, and Morgan C. Jones steals one or two scenes as Charlie, a man who is changed in a way that allows everyone else to see just how weird and deadly their circumstances have become.
It's hard to think of anyone who will hate this, as long as you know roughly what you're in for. The characters are good company, the gags are often all the funnier for being nicely understated amidst the unfolding horror, and there's a good bit of tension in the finale. One or two plot points are a bit too silly and ridiculous, all in service of the comedy though (which I don't begrudge), but the end result is simply a good time for those wanting something that's entertaining, charming, and clocks in at just under 90 minutes.
8/10
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