One of the grimiest movies ever made, Isolation is the ultimate in contained, farm-set horror, perfect from its attention-grabbing opening titles to its chillingly bleak finale. The credits introduce us to the film’s dreary terrain: dilapidated agricultural structures and machinery enclosed by thick, ominous woodland and gates with foreboding NO ENTRY signs—the type of warnings that should absolutely be heeded in horror films but never, ever are. The skies above the dairy farm hidden away somewhere in Ireland are always overcast and the conditions mucky and undesirable, but this is the only existence ever known by the lifelong resident and now sole farmer, Dan Reilly (John Lynch).
Dan’s clearly a stand-up guy, but a shortage of cash forces him to allow a scientist (Marcel Iures) to conduct genetic experiments on his cows, with the local vet—and Dan’s ex—Orla (The Babadook’s Essie Davis, good in a too-brief role) recruited to oversee the progress. When something nips at her hand during a routine fetal examination, it’s first hinted that these attempts at creating more fertile livestock won’t go smoothly. When the cow goes into labor late at night, Dan can’t get the calf out and must enlist the services of Jamie and Mary (Sean Harris and Ruth Negga), the squatters whose trailer has been camped out on Dan’s property. Whatever family drama the couple is running from couldn’t possibly be worse than what they’re about to get sucked into, and the newborn calf’s apparent malformations confirm all suspicions that real terror is on the horizon.
Despite how it may sound, cow-mutant camp this is not—Isolation is nasty, bloody, strictly serious old-school sci-fi, with stunning practical (and animatronic) effects, and the remaining two-thirds of the film plays out as ultra-tense creature feature, taking cues from Alien, The Thing, and some Cronenberg body horror. The slimy fetuses slither everywhere—in your bed, in the water under your feet—and when it becomes known that humans can be infected, the entities must be contained and destroyed at all costs.
Billy O’Brien’s name should be better known and his filmography much longer—it took the writer-director nine years to follow up Isolation with another theatrical film, Scintilla (aka The Hybrid), also starring Lynch and addressing the dangers of genetic modifications. The intriguing teenage horror-drama I Am Not a Serial Killer came two years later. Both are worthy, even if they don’t live up to his kick-ass feature debut, which transcends its small budget with high-caliber performances and production values, as well as a surprising sense of authenticity, that likely derives from O’Brien’s own farm upbringing. 🩸
is a writer, editor, and horror programmer based in New York. She is the editor of Bloodvine and her writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Film Comment, and Rolling Stone.
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