A crew of hardy road workers, led by a bickering Father and Son, must survive the night when they accidentally awaken an ancient Irish vampire.
In an already crowded playing field of Shudder streaming service films, it’s tough to stand out. New Irish vampire comedy sounds like it could check all the exciting new boxes, but it provides just enough force to sustain itself for a little while. The movie provides fairly some bloody scenes, but dials in the humor summoning the spirit of “Shaun of the Dead” with its slacker-coming-of-age storyline. Still, while “Shaun” felt one-of-a-kind, “Boys from County Hell” feels more formulaic. The film conjures up decent laughs and grisly deaths while balancing a slacker storyline told through heavy Irish accents.
Out in a small Irish town thought to be the impetus for Brahm Stoker’s Dracula tale, Jack Rowan plays Eugene Moffat, a local pub-goer, and occasional road crew worker. When Eugene shoves his friend William into a spooky rock cairn he releases a vicious vampire desperate for blood. Eugene must work together with his dad and get the motley crew of road workers together to stop the monster from draining the blood out of everybody in town.
Everybody here feels at ease with the scene work. Rowan anchors the story as he butts heads with Nigel O’Neill, a very suspicious Sam Neill lookalike. While the ensemble functions well it is comedic relief Michael Hough who stands out. The one-liners and fast rips lighten a scene and provide some much-needed hysterics to laugh at. Admittedly, everyone’s accents are so thick I tried to find the captions button immediately. Give the movie some time and you’ll sink into it though, hardly noticing the tough brogue.
“Boys from County Hell” bifurcates along the comedy and horror line fairly well. It balances grisly horror with bar comedy. Some of the scariest scenes involved a brutal slow trickle of blood coming from a hapless character’s eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and any other implied orifice (yes, they go there.) It can cause a chuckle from time to time as these very real humans have very real hysteric reactions to violence, but the movie takes the time to delve into its story.
The movie gets a fair amount of heart in its delivery, and the comedy functions well. Unfortunately, few moments singularly stood out and the whole film felt stuck to its inspiration, a little too homage-y. While I enjoyed “Boys from County Hell,” I can’t say it will be a rewatch for me and I might never have known it existed had I spotted it on Netflix or Hulu. This movie, for better or worse, manages to squeeze on by for a single, decent viewing.
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