Extra Ordinary: The Supernatural Savoiur of Irish Cinema

So Extra Ordinary is out. I've been excited for this movie for ages, and actually watching it, I really liked it. I liked it so much that I won't actually review it. Or at least not the way I usually do, with the "My Thoughts On" kind of thing with the pros and the cons and the recommendation. See, while I really enjoyed this movie, I actually want to talk about why it's important to Irish film, and why, if you can, you need to support it. I can't see this film getting a big release outside of Ireland, so if you can watch it and more importantly support it, please do. See, the Irish film landscape is.... bad. We don't make too any movies a year, and the ones we do make are generally lacking in variety. Your choices for watching a recent Irish movie are essentially this: a mediocre period piece (The Siege of Jadotville, Black '47) or an awful screen adaptation of a comedy series (Mrs Browne's Boys D'Movie, The Damo and Ivor Movie). Obviously, there's exceptions, like the fantastic Brooklyn or John Carney's incredible Sing Street, but by and large, the standard of movies coming out of this country in the last few years have been fairly substandard. There's a few places that this lack of variety could have come from, but my point is that the Irish film industry is incredibly boring

Extra Ordinary feels like a real antidote to this problem; a comedy horror set in the present day about a lonely driving instructor helping a widower save his teenage daughter from a satanic pact made by a washed-up rock star. It's a bizarre premise, but its weirdness is what makes it so important. Again this isn't a review, so I won't go too into why it is this film works, just that it's sharply written, incredibly charming, and so devoted to the batshit craziness of its plot, ballooning into a bonkers finale. It's one of the best comedy horrors in ages, and while it doesn't feel like a gamechanger in itself, it definitely feels like something that's missing in the Irish film landscape. It's mainstream genre cinema, so far from any other high profile Irish film, and it's fusion of brazen genre craziness and a proud national identity give it such a unique personality that we need to see more of. The big problem I have with modern Irish cinema is that it's too safe. It relies on the things we know, and takes too few risks. We've settled into a cycle of not trying anything new, instead making middle of the road films that deal with familiar subject matter in the most basic way possible. Peter Foot's The Young Offenders was definitely a step in the right direction, but Extra Ordinary is exciting because it takes it that step further. Nothing about this feels safe, and it's a brilliant film because it embraces it's genre roots and unique Irishness. These things that make it brilliant also make it important, and that's why you need to support this movie, because we need to see more like it, films that show that this is a land of diverse stories that span a wide range of genres. Extra Ordinary shows what Irish cinema can be, and it's an exciting image to be sure