Author:  Jaedon Abbott 

Folklore is the cry that echoes through all of storytelling. It never shuts up. Our earliest stories were myths shared ‘round a fire and their structures and themes are perpetually replicated and reinvented. Lucy Linger’s Faithful is keenly aware of its folk story roots and nobly presents Scotland’s rich mythological traditions as similarly timeless and resonant. Here the myth of Cu-Sith is central. A shaggy, dark green beast whose three barks augur death for those unlucky enough to be within earshot. There’s an unpredictable inevitability to the Cu-Sith’s tale that sets it apart from other traditional Western depictions of death. Moreover, a fundamental fear of the natural world lurks within the Cu-Sith’s form. It contours the unique relationship between the ancient Scots and mortality, and it (along with the rest of the Gaelic cannon) is fertile ground for modern storytelling. Just not this particular story. 

The film’s narrative arc is simple. 14-year-old Vaila (Lily McGuire), wracked with grief and guilt over the death of her mother, recklessly seeks out the fabled Cu-Sith in an attempt to undo the tragedy of her passing. In so doing she pacifies the beast and, in a brief meeting with her deceased parent, reconciles her guilt. Both Vaila and the Cu-Sith emerge reformed, the former freed from the toll of her mother’s passing, the latter newly content to gently accompany (rather than violently drag) human souls to the afterlife. It’s a strikingly humanist tale, but the metaphor is thin. Compassion and determination are powerful forces, and can even reframe our relationship with death itself. Disappointingly, Faithful fails to differentiate from the countless iterations of stories of death within the canon.         

To the film’s credit, the elevator pitch is instantly intriguing. The myth of the Cu-sith reimagined in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque modern Scotland is precisely the sort of unique storytelling premise that excites independent filmgoers. Despite this, the finished product fails to entice beyond a surface-level quaintness. Shots in the film don’t convey much beyond their immediate subject matter, and the narrative and dialogue suffer from a straightforwardness that’s less “folklore around the campfire” and more “groan-inducingly didactic.” Faithful has a distracting tendency to tell the viewer everything about its characters’ thoughts and the script’s themes. On some level, the film doesn’t mobilise enough of its cinematographic variables to say much of anything. 

There’s a key difference between Faithful and its influences. While characters and plot details in Buffy often verge on the nonsensical or campy (even for 90s standards) Whedon’s pen had a sardonic way of tracing the reflection of supernatural forces on the human condition. The point of Buffy was never the monsters. Vampires became metaphors for a loss of humanity, magic opened the door to ethical debate, and Xander was also there. Faithful’s simplicity belies a narrative that says remarkably little about death. Generously, I might surmise that the film posits death as something that ought to be confronted such that it loses its bite. Yet most of the runtime is sacrificed to meandering dog-related antics. The humour doesn’t elevate the allegory. Precious little time is spent exploring Vaila’s interiority beyond the obvious, and other characters are entirely two-dimensional. This is how fables are told, but Faithful is missing the fable’s most important element: subversion.

Since the hare slept its way to a legendary defeat or Orpheus proved himself incapable of following simple direction, folklore’s tendencies have not been towards realism or subtlety. Through their exaggerations, they howl morals and cautions that even children can discern. Yet it’s the narrative “twist” (taking a nap mid-race or a calamitous double take) that exposes the tragic flaws that beget morals. They tell us something about the sorts of people that might fail these trials and bid us to do better. In other words, the characters make the fable. Simplicity, in this context, is a byproduct of narrative refinement. 

The film endeavours to elevate Scottish fairy tales to the same cultural awareness but conflates narrative simplicity with aesthetic emptiness. There’s a rich potential within Faithful to perform a version of the death fable unlike those influenced by other mythologies. One where the camera work leans into the Cu-Sith’s animalistic, woodsy nature; a reminder that the woods are wonderful and dreadful. Its uncertain inescapable bark should be baked into the sound design, tricking the listeners’ ears in much the same way that would have curdled the blood of ancient Scots. Vaila’s eventual acceptance of her mother’s death didn’t require a supernatural meeting with the deceased, merely a change in mentality. We should feel that her strength of character transformed death itself.

Faithful represents a “get-it-done” style of filmmaking that is, at once, admirable and frustrating. I will continue to extol the virtues of scrappy, independent filmmaking in an industry so desperately craving new perspectives. Scottish voices in filmmaking have been overlooked and undervalued, and if this film curates an interest in more diverse projects, I’ll be there to watch them. In this respect, Faithful is a victory in its own right. Three barks for Faithful. 

Jaedon Abbott is a London-based media essayist from New York City. He holds a BA from New York University and writes for Fox in the Fields. His work has appeared in publications including the UK TV Foundation’s “Reflections” and combines exacting media analysis with argumentative philosophy. You can read his Substack here: https://foxinthefields.substack.com/.