Bring Them Down - Review

For a rural setting,  Christopher Andrew’s Bring Them Down is surprisingly claustrophobic and suffocating. It is a film set in a small rural village full of farmers, where even the slightest misstep can upset the symbiosis. It is a fragile stage which right from the outset has brutal consequences. A film full of dark, daft violence, that not only affects themselves but everything around them.

The film opens with three characters in a car driving down a dirt track, which will be recognisable throughout the film, with the geography of the village as one of the film’s strengths. As they drive, an argument ensues, leading to the driver, Michael speeding up until they crash, leaving his mother dead, his girlfriend physically scarred and himself mentally scarred.

The film cuts to the present where Michael, played by Christopher Abbot, is a Shepard looking after his sheep, whilst looking after his father Ray, who holds dear the last remnants of the Irish language. Meanwhile, Gary and his wife Caroline (Michael’s ex, who was in the car crash) live with their son Jack, played by Barry Keoghan, a teenager who is unsure of his future, but keen to escape his rural home. In a series of events, Michael and Jack’s lives entwine to dire consequences.

I must preface everything by stating that my screening of the film had issues with subtitling, meaning any scenes involving the Irish language, most notably between Michael and his father I basically had to go off my intuition of what had happened previously to infer what they were talking about. Therefore, I most definitely missed some of the minutiae in terms of detail, and I’m working more in broad strokes. That being said, I found the film gripping and surprisingly tense given the technical issues.

The film is propelled by a brilliant percussive score that is slightly off-kilter and ajar. It adds a fundamentally fractious layer with a shivery disorder that complements the film beautifully. Likewise, its implementation within the sound design is impressive. It is not afraid to make the score loud and foreboding, with the levels of sound another one of the film’s strengths.

This all creates a tense and gripping atmosphere of agricultural warfare between two rivalling farms, dealing with the contrasting ideas of tradition and progress. Abbott’s farm is built on tradition, rhythm and routine. His father keeps the ancestral tongue, whilst Abbott cares for his sheep and never thinks about a life outside of farming in a brilliantly control but silently brooding performance.

In the other household, there is a more modern approach. The house is full of new appliances such as a stand mixer Paul Hollywood would be proud of. Gary is considering dissolving the business and selling it off as holiday lets, bringing economic prosperity.

This gives an interesting ground to watch the tense and brittle relationship fall apart. However, the film decides to show this with a non-linear narrative where the two halves of the film lend a different perspective, similar to that of Rashamon or more recently Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. Whilst I enjoy this structural ploy usually, I feel like it exposes the film’s weakness like a bloody wound, as the two halves are not ambiguous enough, there is not much moral ambiguity to the characters, and there is not enough sting and twist in the alternating perspective.

Bring Them Down is a film of almost sibling-like conflict with dire consequences. But it feels like this is a vicious cycle like they are each devouring a box of Quality Streets to the point they are sick to the stomach. Whilst it could have done with a little more neutrality, it is definitely full of zip, zing and a tense, nasty bite – Andrews is a director full of promise.