CAVEAT review: Shudder’s new Irish horror tale will get under your skin

We seem to be in the midst of a modern Irish horror film renaissance, with recent nail-biters like A Hole in the Ground, The Boys From County Hell, and Son. Horror fans can now add Shudder‘s Caveat to the ever-growing list. The feature film debut from Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy, Caveat is a sparse and unnerving take on the haunted house mythos, filled with strong performances and some welcome Lynchian touches.

Isaac (Jonathan French, A Soldier’s Voice) is a partial amnesiac who has fallen on hard times. Desperate to make ends meet, he begrudgingly accepts an offer from his landlord Barret (Ben Caplan, Band of Brothers) to watch over his niece Olga (Leila Sykes, Missing Something) for a few days. Unfortunately for Isaac, the job isn’t as easy as it seems — the decrepit house is on a secluded island, and he is forced to wear a harness at all times to restrict him from certain rooms.

Chained up alone in the spooky cabin with Olga, Isaac begins experiencing strange phenomena and uncovers disturbing secrets within the home, all while trying to steer clear of Olga’s increasingly erratic and dangerous tendencies.

With elements of Saw and Memento crossed with a traditional ghost story, Caveat is a mesmerizing single-location horror film that delivers some jump-worthy moments of pure dread. The film’s writer-director Damian McCarthy seems less interested in tying up every loose end than in crafting a sustained atmosphere of unease, where the line between reality and the supernatural dream world is constantly being shifted.

What’s truly exciting about Caveat is how much McCarthy and the actors accomplish with so little. Jonathan French plays the dazed Isaac with the resigned air of someone who can barely accept his increasingly outrageous circumstances, and Leila Sykes effortlessly flitters between innocence and aggression as the troubled Olga.

Yet in spite of all the great talent on and off-screen, it’s the film’s wind-up drummer toy that will truly haunt your dreams. It’s a deceptively simple concept, but one that McCarthy deploys to terror-inducing heights throughout the film. Sometimes it’s the little things that stick with us, and Caveat is full of the sort of terrifying imagery and ideas that will have you slowly lurking around each corner as you cautiously creep into bed.

Caveat is streaming now on Shudder.