Bring Them Down
Directed by Christopher Andrews
Written by Christopher Andrews & Jonathan Hourigan
Starring Barry Keoghan, Christopher Abbott, & Colm Meaney
Rated R
Runtime: 1 hour and 45 minutes
Available in theaters on February 7th

by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

Many awful situations are often the results of compounding facts and events that eventually make their way to knocking over the final domino of disaster. Bring Them Down is no different. For Michael (Christopher Abbot) and Jack (Barry Keoghan), the first dominos that bring them to the final moments of the film are vastly different, not to mention decades apart. Michael’s moment is the car accident that killed his mother and ruined his relationship with (now) ex-girlfriend Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone). Jack’s moment, on the other hand, is Michael’s father, Ray (Colm Meaney), refusing to let Jack and his own father, Gary (Paul Ready), use the road next to the house while their bridge is out. 

Coupled with outstanding, understated performances, Christopher Andrews lets the dread and tension build deliciously in his directorial debut. From the cut and realization of the car accident at the start of the film, there’s no telling where Michael’s quiet, but palpable, rage will lead him. He’s already a pot of hot water, ready to boil over, but when the rams on his father’s farm become the target for cruel acts, there’s no amount of taking him off the heat that will slow him down. 

Something that I think works wonderfully in Bring Them Down is the swap in perspective between Michael and Jack. This is where we learn about the road issue, which leads to Jack stealing the rams and trying to pass them off as his family’s. Which, of course, is the proper kick off for the plot. We understand, more, about what Jack’s household is like and the kind of financial troubles they’re suffocating under and how a child aims to resolve those issues. (The answer is stupidly, but it makes perfect sense for Jack and the plot trajectory of the film.) When we finally swap from Michael to Jack and get new scenes leading up to the main events of the film, and also some repeated scenes, it works really well to fill out the film. It’s not quite a ​​Rashomon element, as the events aren’t changing when we see them again, but it adds additional context and gives us a clearer picture of exactly what’s happening leading up to the final conflict.

Now, a big element of the film, that lives in the background, is that everyone is in a strange state of arrested development—especially Michael. While Abbott and Keoghan are actually very close in age, only six years apart, Keoghan feels like he could be an actual teenager or twenty-something and that Abbott could have been his father. If the accident hadn’t happened, that is. Instead, Caroline is left with a facial scar, the reminder of the unchecked and quiet rage of men, and marries someone else. Bring them Down is, after all, largely a film about how men allow themselves to ruin their own lives, and the lives of the people around them. Particularly, though, in the father-son dynamic. It is in the father-son relationship that all of their isolated existences revolve. 

It works to keep the film small and intimate, as Andrews does. These are two families utterly linked by a shared trauma that keeps perpetuating and, while it spills (to some degree) outside of them, it’s pretty contained in both time and space to their two farms and the harms they do to each other. The theme of masculinity and its toxicity gets deeper, darker, and more unchecked in the wilds of isolation is loud and clear. The violence done to both people and animals is up close and personal—and it walks hand-in-hand with the rage buzzing under the whole of the film. 

Bring Them Down is an engaging thriller filled with stunning performances that will have you on the edge of your seat. It’s specific in its setting and characters, sheep farmers in rural Ireland, but within that specificity it finds a universal language. That language is clear and precise in its understanding of violence, toxic masculinity, and the way they interact to cause the greatest harm to not just others, but to the self. 

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