Irish actor-turned-director Antonia Campbell-Hughes is the latest female voice in film to take on a male-driven narrative. It Is In Us All came to be as part of Screen Ireland’s campaign for more female-focused, micro-budget films, but as Campbell-Hughes iterated to the Irish Times, she’s not conventional. Her feature debut is firmly rooted in the male experience; Campbell-Hughes herself play’s the film’s only female character.

Our man at the centre of the story is Hamish Considine (Cosmo Jarvis), a thirty-something-year-old Londoner who has decided to make something of a spiritual sojourn to Donegal, Ireland, the resting place of his late mother and, more recently, his aunt, whose funeral beckons. Judging by the premise alone, it would seem our protagonist is a lonely figure; one who feels a void where family and the women in his life once existed. Hamish does still have his Dad in his life (Claes Bang), but it is only through phone calls and Zoom calls that he can connect with him. When a near-miss with another car on the dark, winding roads to Donegal puts Hamish in the hospital and a young boy six feet under, it is that boy’s friend, Evan (newcomer Rhys Mannion), with whom Hamish become curiously connected.

Despite the emotional burden of Hamish’s circumstances, Jarvis plays his character as a relatively blank slate. Hamish is expressionless and stoic; monotone when he speaks, and even robotic in the way he moves. He spends much of Campbell-Hughes’ film languishing around the gloomy landscapes of Donegal, or haunting his mother’s old home. You get the sense that Campbell-Hughes intends her film to be a minimalist mood piece, but Jarvis’ reserved performance and his director’s thin writing give us too minimal a story to make the mood feel authentic. The lush and transcendent score does an admirable job at trying to fill in where the other components falter, but without substantial terrain upon which to find purchase, the score, like the mists and fogs of Donegal, only ends up floating.

There are some deep-seated family tensions simmering between Hamish and his father, maybe, but their Zoom interactions and how they’re filmed don’t allow the respective actors to react to each other in interesting ways. Hamish and Evan’s relationship has a compelling sub textual element to it, but their scenes together are too parsed out, stilted, and esoteric. Somewhere in this film is a story about shared traumas and grief, and the self-realizations born within; about subverting one’s masculine identity. However, Campbell-Hughes doesn’t dive deep enough or write distinct enough voices for this story to take off, and so it stays mired.

The production of It Is In Us All was hampered by Covid restrictions, as well as a last-minute swapping of its lead actor and extreme weather conditions in rural Ireland, and unfortunately this is glaringly apparent in the final cut. In one scene, undoubtedly meant to take place in a club packed with ravers, Hamish and Evan dance with no one else around them as music blares and lights flash in what might as well be a concrete box. One could argue that this reflects the desolated setting and tone of the film—the Covid-era filmed, Ontario set Kicking Blood recently attempted a similar ploy—but, really, it just feels unnatural, awkward, and low budget.

It Is in Us All has some striking, almost gothic-looking visuals going for it, in addition to some strong performances from Mannion and Campbell-Hughes herself. The score, mentioned earlier, works overtime. But none of this is given a chance to enrich the aimless narrative, help Hamish’s journey feel like more than an empty experiment in sullen navel gazing. Let us hope that an end to this pandemic will mean directors like Campbell-Hughes will be less inhibited during future projects, finally able to see their stories materialize as intended.