'The soul of the house really is stamped all over the movie' – Laois horror-comedy film hits Irish cinemas

The Restoration at Grayson Manor, a horror-comedy filmed at Stradbally Hall, comes to Irish cinemas next week.

The movie stars Chris Colfer, the Californian actor best known for his role as Kurt in Glee, and South African actor Alice Krige.

Dublin-born director Glenn McQuaid scoped several castles and manor houses in Ireland before filming began, but “fell in love” with Stradbally Hall, which was perfectly equipped for a key scene in the film.

“We went and saw quite a few locations. We were all over the country,” McQuaid said. “Myself and my producer John McDonald got in a car a couple times a week for quite a while, and we would find great castles and mansions, and, for one reason or another, they weren’t quite right. John took me down to Stradbally Hall, and as soon as I got there, I sort of ran straight to the staircase, because that’s sort of a big set piece for the movie.”

He continued: “There's an accident that happens pretty close to the start of the movie, and I needed a fairly big and beautiful staircase that we could shoot this accident in a way that was going to look great, that was obviously going to be safe for the actors, and give us all enough room to sort of film it in the way I had envisioned.”

The cast and crew stayed locally for the three months of filming in summer 2024. McQuaid spent much of his time on set at Stradbally Hall, however, with the location even inspiring late-stage amendments to the script.

“I was staying close by in Abbeyleix actually with a bunch of the crew as well. But to be honest with you, I was at Stradbally first thing every morning, and somewhat probably last to leave as well. I just found it really, really invigorating to be in the location. I was doing some sort of rewrites all the way up until shooting, and even during shooting, I was just getting inspired by the location and absolutely fell in love with the location, to the point, as I said, I was tweaking the script so that we could really sort of lean into what the house was offering us.”

McQuaid commended Stradbally Hall’s owners, the Cosby family who, he said, “opened the doors for us and really, really welcomed us to Stradbally Hall,” even permitting the family’s heirlooms to be incorporated into the movie.

“I knew that wherever we chose, I wanted it to be reflected in the movie. I really wanted the location and Grayson Manor itself to be a character in its own right within the movie,” McQuaid said. “So, I just really wanted to honour the house and lean into the beautiful details that the house was giving us.

“The Cosby family also gave us permission to use a lot of the family portraiture in our movie, as well as a lot of their great ornaments and decorations. For instance, we ended up using quite a lot of their taxidermied pieces throughout the movie as well. So Stradbally just offered us an awful lot of production value that we took great advantage of.

“The soul of the house really is stamped all over the movie.”

While in Ireland for the premiere last February, Chris Colfer jokingly shared his suspicions that Stradbally Hall is haunted, recalling how in his dressing room, which occupied the old maids’ quarters in the house, clothes would fall off the table or the door would open without being touched.

McQuaid laughed: “Well, I can pick up on these things too, but I just felt such a wonderful, warm and welcoming vibe to the house,” even noting that “between takes and often at lunches, I would go find a room to myself where there was no one in and just sort of lie down on the floor and do some breathing exercises and so on.

“You know, Chris is a bit of a ghost hunter – it's his thing. He actually does this, and he's a great believer in the afterlife and the spirit world, so he did have some pretty significant situations and things happen there. And he does have video footage of doors opening and things moving and so on,” McQuaid continued, joking: “I keep getting [on to] him to release the tapes, but he's holding on to them for a little bit.”

The film was scored by McQuaid himself and young Laois composer Reuben Harvey, who was originally hired for a very different role on set.

A prominent element of the story is a pair of sentient, disembodied hands which roam the house, a nod to the cult horror films McQuaid grew up watching. When the crew arrived in Laois, they had yet to cast the hand actor.

“So I was meeting a lot of local men who were coming in and showing me their hands,” McQuaid recounted. “Some of these hands were like just not appropriate. They had to match Chris's hands, and some of these hands were like shovels, you know, giant, hairy hands.

“And then I met Reuben, and he had the most dexterous hands, and I just thought, perfect, these will be a great match for Chris.

“So we hired Reuben, and then when I was on set, I told him, I said, gosh, you've got very dexterous fingers, you could be a pianist. And he said, well, I am, and I'm a composer actually, and I just thought to myself, no way.

“So I asked him to send me some of his work. He did. I loved it. And I asked him to jump on board to co-compose the music with me.

“It was a lovely way of developing a community while on set and offering opportunities to everybody. I think that was as important to me as the end result of the movie.

“I have to say, [Harvey] is just a gem. He’s the nicest guy in the world, and he is just so, so talented,” McQuaid added. “He really was a pleasure to work with and really rolled up his sleeves with me, and I'm absolutely delighted with the score.”

Read our interview with Reuben Harvey in the latest issue of Laois Life magazine.

Shooting also took place in Portlaoise and featured local extras. Fiona Kinsella and Laois native Leeona Duff spearheaded outreach to young locals and the wider LGBTQ+ community to cast the extras for the movie’s opening nightclub scene, which was filmed in the Dunamaise Arts Centre theatre.

“We had a lot of the LGBT community from Laois, as well as all over Ireland, show up to be part of that. So that was really quite lovely to be involved in, and to have this sort of cool queer space in the middle of Ireland was wonderful,” McQuaid said, adding that local resident Henrietta Hamilton was also “a wonderful help at the location and to the production.”

The Restoration at Grayson Manor comes to Irish cinemas on Friday, November 6, 2026.

McQuaid describes the film as “a melodramatic horror-comedy that talks about what it’s like to grow up as a queer person in a heteronormative society.” It is set in the fictional Grayson Manor (Stradbally Hall) and centres on the dysfunctional relationship between an aristocratic mother and son.