Review: "The Banshees of Inisherin"

The Irish film The Banshees of Inisherin has hit many critics’ top 10 lists and led the Golden Globe nominations earlier this month with a whopping eight nods, including among them best film (musical or comedy), best actor in the same genre for Colin Farrell, best supporting actor and actress for Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon, and best direction and screenplay for Martin McDonagh.

If that alone isn’t a resounding success for a dialogue-heavy film set on an island off the coast of mainland Ireland in 1923, what is?

Categorized as a “musical or comedy,” Banshees is indeed laugh-out-loud funny at some of its more absurd moments. But it’s a dark humor that can almost make you feel bad about laughing once you realize just how tragic the characters and events McDonagh has scripted are.

Their horizons are as limited as the view from their island, where an endlessly overcast sky vanishes into a grey sea.

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Read the full review at AWFJ.org

Images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.