Bring Them Down

The characters in Christopher Andrews’ feature directorial debut live on a knife’s edge, eager to evade the dark shadows of the past and the myriad forms of ruin threatening their future. Chronicling a feud between neighbouring families in rural Ireland, Bring Them Down draws us to a world of desolate beauty and desperate men.

Michael (Christopher Abbott, Sanctuary, TIFF ’22; The Forgiven, TIFF ’21) tends his family’s sheep business entirely on his own. His father (Colm Meaney) is disabled, and his mother died years ago in a car accident in which Michael was the driver. Michael has lived with guilt ever since — as well as a secret he hopes will never come to light.

Michael’s ex, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), was also in that car accident and has the scars to prove it. She wound up marrying Gary (Paul Ready), another sheep farmer. Near the start of Bring Them Down, Caroline and Gary’s son, Jack (Barry Keoghan, also at the Festival with Bird), claims that two of Michael’s prize rams were found dead on his family’s property. Michael’s suspicions are aroused, old wounds are opened, and the two families, with neither willing to stand down, find themselves on a perilous collision course.

Bring Them Down bristles with twists and tension, its gorgeous pastoral landscapes turning into sites of escalating violence. Yet the film never settles for simplistic hero/villain binaries. Instead, it brilliantly shifts perspective, revealing the fears and aspirations driving all its characters — a strategy that succeeds in no small part due to Abbott and Keoghan, who share an incredible ability to reveal for the camera what their characters are hell-bent on hiding.

ROBYN CITIZEN

Content advisory: explicit violence, accident trauma, simulated animal violence, coarse language