Citadel founded on terror
FOR a director, every film is personal. Some films, however, are more personal than others. Citadel, the accomplished new horror film by Ciarán Foy, was inspired by a vicious assault the Dubliner suffered some years ago as he walked home from the cinema. Foy, then 18 years old, was beaten with a hammer by a gang of thugs who also threatened him with a syringe. In the aftermath he was left to struggle with crippling agoraphobia, only shaking it off after he began studying film in Dun Laoghaire Institute for Art and Design.
All of the key elements in Foy’s ordeal reappear in the disturbing narrative of Citadel, where the protagonist, Tommy (Aneurin Barnard) is left with agoraphobia after he witnesses an attack on his pregnant wife in the tower block where they live. Against the backdrop of a nightmare world, Tommy is left to care for his infant daughter, even while harassed by feral bands of syringe-bearing, hooded youths. Bringing some gristle and much-needed levity to proceedings is a foul-mouthed priest played by brawny old Scot, James Cosmo.
