{"id":740652,"date":"2026-08-17T08:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740652\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T08:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:54:09","slug":"skintown-review-northern-irish-scamps-rave-their-troubles-away-edinburgh-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/740652\/","title":{"rendered":"Skintown review \u2013 Northern Irish scamps rave their Troubles away | Edinburgh film festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Derry Girls meets Human Traffic in this spirited, larky and at times poignant period piece about raving and drug dealing scamps in Northern Ireland<\/a> in the 1990s. It doesn\u2019t go quite so far as to suggest that the social revolution that MDMA engendered in youth culture and spread to the rest of the UK in that decade played a causal role in the Northern Irish peace process \u2013 the way some people suggest ecstasy put a stop to football hooliganism, for example. But it does note the coincidence of the timing.<\/p>\n

The centrepiece of the film is a club night and beachside afterparty at which Carl Cox DJs and \u201cCatholics and Protestants come together and dance, all juiced up on vitamin E\u201d \u2013 on the same day in August 1994 that the IRA announces an end to hostilities. At the afterparty, our heroes from the Catholic side of Enniskillen \u2013 \u201cSkintown\u201d to the locals \u2013 get loved-up and giggly with a British squaddie, and all their troubles, ie the Troubles, seem to melt away. \u201cI love Brits,\u201d one says with a spliff in his mouth. \u201cI love the IRA. I love the RUC \u2026 If you love them, you defuse them, they have no reason to fight you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film, and the historical record, both note that there was a comedown after the highs of that night, and that the 1994 ceasefire was provisional. But Skintown is able to maintain a mood of defiant apoliticism, and forcefully states the rights of young people to ignore their forefathers\u2019 enmities and to write fresh pages in the stories of their lives.<\/p>\n

It is for reasons of wanting a fresh start that our somewhat depressed and traumatised, indie-loving protagonist Vinny (Jack Rowan) has an escape fund in a biscuit tin under his bed. It\u2019s also why he and Jonty (The Young Offenders\u2019 Chris Walley), his ravey best mate and co-worker of an evening at Tony Pepperoni\u2019s Pizzeria, agree to take a bag of 400 pills that were stolen from the Ulster Volunteer Force and daringly, or foolhardily, flog them in a club under the noses of the very same paramilitary thugs.<\/p>\n

Adapting his own 2018 novel about these escapades, Ciar\u00e1n McMenamin has ported too many chunks into the voiceover, giving the film a bit of a telling-not-showing problem. But there are also lots of vivid specifics, such as the cheekily sacrilegious way Jonty says \u201cbody of Christ\u201d as he places an ecstasy tablet into each of a row of outstretched hands. And in one of those details a writer probably wouldn\u2019t think up if they hadn\u2019t grown up with sectarian violence in the background, there is a topless raver really going for it in a wheelchair. He was paralysed from the waist down by an IRA bullet \u2013 but he\u2019s there dancing in the club every week, so the dealers stash their pills in his chair and call it \u201cdeals on wheels\u201d.<\/p>\n

The club in question, Kellys in Portrush, County Antrim, really was a utopian haven for wide-eyed dancers at the time and Cox really did play there in 1994 (albeit probably not on the night of the ceasefire, which was a Wednesday). The soundtrack is spot on, featuring aural madeleines by the Prodigy, Josh Wink, Jaydee and, in one glorious peak moment, some choral Debussy. So while viewers who were there and really lived it in the 90s might cavil about minor lapses in authenticity here and there, it\u2019s more likely viewers are going to savour the rush of youthful hedonism the film has to offer \u2013 and willingly succumb to its free-spirited impulses.<\/p>\n

Skintown screened at the Edinburgh film festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derry Girls meets Human Traffic in this spirited, larky and at times poignant period piece about raving and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-740652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}