A Haunting of Hormones and Heartache
Irish horror doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how good it is at making you feel both terrified and vaguely Catholic-guilty at the same time. Dark Touch (2013), written and directed by Marina de Van, takes that tradition and cranks it up to eleven—literally, since its heroine is an eleven-year-old girl who could make Carrie White look like a well-adjusted Girl Scout.
This isn’t just a supernatural horror film; it’s a full-blown psychic meltdown dressed up as a fairy tale gone feral. Equal parts The Exorcist, Matilda, and Home Alone (if Kevin had telekinesis and unresolved trauma), Dark Touch turns domestic horror into something that feels both deeply human and gleefully unhinged.
It’s the rare film that’s both harrowing and hilarious—if your sense of humor happens to live somewhere in the intersection between gallows and absurdist.
Welcome to Ireland, Population: Trauma
The film opens in a small, mist-drenched Irish village where fun goes to die. Niamh (Missy Keating) lives with her parents and baby brother in a house that feels like it was decorated by IKEA’s haunted division. She keeps telling everyone that the house is alive—furniture moving, toys attacking, lights flickering—but her parents respond the way adults in horror movies always do: they ignore her completely.
One night, after a series of increasingly strange events, her neighbors Nat (Marcella Plunkett) and Lucas (Pádraic Delaney) find the family home looking like a Jackson Pollock painting in blood. Everyone’s dead except for Niamh, who’s found clutching her suffocated baby brother and muttering about how the house did it.
Now, if you or I said “the house did it,” the cops might at least consider that something supernatural happened. But this is Ireland, where the police response to paranormal homicide seems to be “Eh, probably vandals.”
A Foster Home, A New Beginning, and Some Light Levitation
After her parents’ “unexplained” deaths, Niamh is taken in by her kindly neighbors, Nat and Lucas, who seem like good people but also exactly the kind of couple who say things like “She just needs a stable environment.” They soon realize that the problem wasn’t the house—it was Niamh.
The little girl is polite, quiet, and capable of hurling furniture across the room with her mind. There’s something both tragic and darkly funny about watching this sweet foster family try to make her feel at home while their house slowly turns into a demolition derby.
What Marina de Van does so brilliantly here is walk the razor’s edge between horror and absurdity. There’s a scene where Niamh’s telekinesis flares up mid-dinner, and instead of screaming or running, everyone just looks vaguely inconvenienced. It’s like they’re more annoyed about the cleanup than the physics-defying nightmare in front of them.
Missy Keating: The Tiny Tornado of Terror
Let’s talk about Missy Keating, because this kid deserves a medal—or at least an exorcism. Her performance as Niamh is haunting, empathetic, and unnervingly controlled. She doesn’t play the role like a monster; she plays it like a deeply wounded child who doesn’t understand her own power.
Every telekinetic outburst feels like a panic attack made visible. You can see the fear in her eyes right before she turns a room into a blender. She’s not a villain—she’s an 11-year-old girl who’s been hurt so deeply that the world itself starts to warp around her emotions.
Think Carrie, but with less prom and more existential dread.
Child Abuse, Psychic Violence, and the Horror of Growing Up
Beneath its supernatural surface, Dark Touch is a brutal allegory about childhood trauma and abuse. The violence that Niamh inflicts isn’t random—it’s a reflection of the violence she’s endured. Every object that moves, every person that dies, feels like a physical manifestation of the pain she can’t express.
De Van doesn’t sensationalize it. Instead, she lets the horror come from empathy. The blood, the broken furniture, the psychic outbursts—all of it feels secondary to the emotional devastation at the film’s core.
It’s the kind of horror that doesn’t just scare you—it makes you uncomfortable in ways you can’t quite laugh off. But then again, maybe you should laugh, because otherwise you’ll just end up hugging your furniture and apologizing for buying it.
The Dark Humor of the Domestic
Here’s the thing: Dark Touch is funny. Not in a “haha, killer doll” kind of way, but in a dry, grimly ironic sense. The characters’ total inability to interpret what’s happening feels almost like satire.
Nat and Lucas try every ineffective foster-parent strategy imaginable. They talk gently. They offer hugs. They try to reason with a girl who just melted a doorframe with her mind. It’s like watching the world’s worst parenting workshop—one that ends with spontaneous combustion.
There’s also a wicked irony in how the adults rationalize the violence. Every time something supernatural happens, they scramble to explain it in the dumbest possible way. “Maybe the window was open,” they say, while their furniture spins like a tornado behind them. It’s denial as performance art.
And in a darkly comic way, isn’t that what adulthood really is? Pretending you have everything under control while the world catches fire around you?
A Horror Film That Actually Means Something
What elevates Dark Touch above your average telekinetic horror flick is Marina de Van’s unwavering commitment to theme. This isn’t just a story about ghosts or powers—it’s about how trauma echoes through space and time.
The “haunting” is really a form of emotional resonance. The violence that Niamh experienced doesn’t die with her parents; it infects everything around her. Every room she enters becomes a living, breathing manifestation of her pain.
It’s devastating, yes—but also kind of cathartic. Watching Niamh’s power erupt feels like watching every suppressed emotion finally find release. The walls crack, the lights explode, and you can’t help but think, “Good for her.”
If you’ve ever wanted to see emotional healing represented by spontaneous telekinetic arson, this is your movie.
Style, Substance, and the Irish Gothic Gloom
Visually, Dark Touch is stunning. The cinematography captures the Irish countryside in all its bleak, misty beauty. Everything looks slightly damp, slightly cold, slightly cursed—which, to be fair, is Ireland’s entire brand.
The muted palette and natural lighting make the supernatural moments feel shockingly grounded. When blood splatters on the walls, it’s not stylized; it looks horribly real, like someone’s memories bleeding into the wallpaper.
De Van’s direction is confident and deliberate. She doesn’t rely on jump scares or loud noises. Instead, she lets the horror simmer—slow, creeping, and unavoidable. It’s the kind of film where even silence feels threatening.
The Ending: A Shattered Fairy Tale
Without spoiling too much, Dark Touch ends exactly the way it should—ambiguously, heartbreakingly, and just a little bit funny if your soul’s as dark as the movie’s lighting.
Niamh’s power doesn’t bring salvation; it brings understanding. And in a perverse way, that feels hopeful. The message isn’t “trauma makes you a monster.” It’s “trauma makes you different, and maybe that’s its own kind of strength.”
It’s the kind of horror ending that doesn’t tie a neat bow around the chaos. Instead, it stares at the mess, sighs deeply, and mutters, “Well… that happened.”
Final Verdict: A Beautiful, Bleak Bedtime Story
Dark Touch is not a crowd-pleaser. It’s slow, sad, and full of uncomfortable truths. But it’s also brilliant—a gothic fable about abuse, grief, and the terrifying power of being young and misunderstood.
Missy Keating delivers one of the best child performances in modern horror, and Marina de Van proves she can balance terror, empathy, and absurdity with surgical precision.
It’s the kind of movie that sticks with you—not because of what it shows, but because of what it makes you feel.
Rating: 9 out of 10 haunted IKEA lamps.
Because sometimes, when your childhood home attacks you, burning it down might just be therapy.
