Irish horror 'Oddity' triumphs at Lisbon's MOTELX 2024

This is not a festival for the faint-hearted. MOTELX, which every year brings the best and most chilling horror cinema from around the world to Lisbon, is a week full of frights of all kinds and for all tastes.

While some might be breathing sighs of relief at the festival's end, there's plenty of cause for celebration the makers of Oddity, the winner of its main prize, the Meliès d'Argent, which rewards the best European film and gives access to the Meliès d'Or competition at Sitges.

The Irish production from Damian McCarthy is presented as "a delight for those who like jump scares", a film that "crawls up your spine with its silences, shadows and twists".

The jury, in awarding the prize, considered Oddity to be "an engaging story, told with style, good practical effects and new levels of suspense, realised in a dark and provocative register. We also loved the director's previous film(Caveat) and are really looking forward to seeing what new material he chooses in the future," concluded the jury.

Ireland in the spotlight

But Ireland's contribution to this year's choices didn't stop there and the country also brought us Fréwaka, by director Aislinn Clarke.

Her feature was less concerned with upfront thrills but more about psychological terror and inner fears. It's a film focussed on mourning and loneliness, in which the legends and traditions of deep Ireland play a central role.

The film has the particularity of being spoken almost entirely in Irish Gaelic, something that speaks volumes to the director and screenwriter, who was in Lisbon to talk to Euronews Culture: "My whole upbringing was in Irish Gaelic, my father spoke Irish at home. There's never been a horror film in Irish before, and I grew up watching horror films. Given how dark our histories are and how traumatic our history is, it's amazing that there's never been a horror film in Irish. So when the producers offered to make this film in Irish, I accepted without hesitation," he says.

"There's a lot of trauma and pain in Irish history. The film is about that, about our shared traumas," she concludes.

Back to the winners, Meat Puppet, by Eros V (UK) won the Meliès d'Argent for best short film and O Procedimento, by Chico Noras, a darkly humorous story about euthanasia, took the prize for best Portuguese horror short film.

But we can't talk about the winners of this festival without mentioning The Substance, the film that made a sensation at Cannes and promises to be one of the great films of this new year for horror fans, scheduled for release this autumn in the main markets.

A film in which human flesh is the main material (from the very revealing shots of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley's bodies to the orgy of blood and monstrosity that grows until the apotheosis), this fable about the myth of eternal youth is a mix of black comedy and body horror, signed by French director Coralie Fargeat. The film, which was presented out of competition, won the Audience Award.

MOTELX comes of age

It was in 2007 that this festival, directed by Pedro Souto and João Monteiro, began to frighten Lisbon residents. With its 18th edition, the festival has come of age with increased maturity, both in terms of attendance and audience support, as well as the number of films shown: "It has been and continues to be a great adventure," says Pedro Souto. "We started with a much smaller festival. Now we have a whole week, with around 80 sessions and more than 100 films. Over the years, we've had a lot of Portuguese films, and that makes me very happy. People come here and see that Portuguese horror exists," he concludes.

The Portuguese cinema presented here includes not only the 10 short films in the running for the prize for best Portuguese short film and eight competing alongside the international shorts, but also rarities and curiosities such as O Velho e a Espada (The Old Man and the Sword), Fábio Powers' first feature film, which arrives here after its world premiere at the Fantasia festival in Montréal.

An admittedly "B-series" film made on a very low budget, with special effects worthy of Nollywood, a lot of humour and, above all, a lot of resourcefulness, The Old Man and the Sword is both a tribute by Fábio Powers to a figure from the village where he spends his holidays (who plays the lead role in the film) and to Japanese productions such as Kamen Rider, which he grew up with: "The production was chaotic, nobody knew what I was doing, only I had the structure of the film in my head," he tells Euronews Culture. The presence of this film at the festival proves that there is horror here for all tastes.

Clearly an example of a winning bet, João Monteiro defines MOTELX like this: "More than a success in terms of audiences, what I'd like to emphasise is that this is a festival with atmosphere and that's what attracts people. Every year there are people who come here for the first time and discover that, after all, horror is their favourite genre."

Films so chilling that they make viewers faint?: "In the first few years we had a few cases of people feeling ill, but that was largely because the rooms didn't have air conditioning", says Pedro Souto.

So, if you want to attend the 2025 edition, you can come as long as you like, as all the screens at the São Jorge cinema are now properly air-conditioned and we don't think you'll faint... but we can't guarantee that you won't jump up and down in your seat.