Written and directed by Christopher Andrews, for his feature length debut, this Irish thriller stars Christopher Abbott as farmer Michael O’Shea. There is a simmering tension with his neighbouring farmer, Gary (Paul Ready), who married Michael’s ex, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), and his son Jack (Barry Keoghan). When Jack tells Michael that he found two of his rams dead, Michael suspects foul play.
The one word that springs to mind when thinking about Bring Them Down is bleak. The characters’ lives are bleak, the weather is bleak, and the story is bleak. Despite the great talent on screen, that also includes Colm Meaney as Michael’s Dad and Aaron Heffernan as the psychotic friend of Jack’s, the story is not at all engaging. Andrews’ script is not well developed. An opening death caused by Michael is never sufficiently explained, and as good as Noone is, it is inexplicable why Caroline is with Gary.
Abbott is much better here than in the recent Wolf Man and I cannot fault the cast at all. However, the device of showing the first half of the story twice, once from Michael’s point of view, and once from Jack’s does not help. Not only does it slow things down, it also means that we are subjected to unnecessarily graphic scenes of animal cruelty not once, but twice. The film stumbles to its, yes bleak conclusion, without ever taking off.
Rating: 4 out of 10