Rating: R | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: September 30th, 2022 (USA) / March 31st, 2023 (Ireland)
Studio: Volta Pictures / A24
Director(s): Saela Davis & Anna Rose Holmer
Writer(s): Shane Crowley / Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly & Shane Crowley (story)

As one son tragically dies in the water every superstitious fisherman on this remote Irish island refuses to learn to swim, another returns. Brian (Paul Mescal) has been gone for years, telling everyone he’d moved to Australia despite never sending an address. It’s thus a dream come true for his mother Aileen (Emily Watson). Children who leave rarely come back and those who stay often find themselves drowning like Brian’s old friend Mark or languishing in what becomes a prison of the soul. So, she lets him pick up where he left off working her father-in-law’s oyster farm now that he’s unable and her husband, Declan Conlon’s Con, couldn’t maintain it alone. It’s not what Brian ever wanted, but Aileen’s never been happier.

That high doesn’t last long, however. This perfect façade Aileen hopes might come to fruition starts stalling when father and son argue about the latter risking his life by working the farm at high tide and threatens to deteriorate once and for all when she’s called to the police station to answer a question: Was Brian with her the night of an attack? We know what she does, namely that she left him at the bar with his old high school flame Sarah (Aisling Franciosi). And considering the events that transpire the next morning, Aileen has to know something isn’t quite right. But can she throw this dream away so soon? Her instinct is to lie. To protect her perfect son at the cost of everything.

God’s Creatures is co-directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer (writer and director of The Fits, respectively) with a similar sense of tension. Written by Shane Crowley (from a story by Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly and himself), the plot unfolds with a quiet yet hopeful intensity as we meet the players in this close-knit community that’s as quick to mourn a loss as throw the living under the bus to maintain the status quo. We can feel a reckoning approaching once the honeymoon of this prodigal son’s return starts wearing off, but we also want to believe Aileen’s image of her son is pure. By defending him without even talking to Sarah, however, she can’t help but let reality finally come into focus.

It’s a fantastic piece of storytelling with an authentic air of emotion that never feels unearned or embellished. This is a “boy’s club” world wherein abuse has always been ignored or accepted due to generations of embedded misogyny. And while it’s one thing to look the other way or let it happen to you, conscious complicity in someone else’s abuse is different. What does this choice do to how Aileen looks at her son? At herself? To lie is to let the entire town turn Sarah into a pariah. And for what? More toxic male rage to come? More silence for women like her own daughter Erin (Toni O’Rourke) to endure their pain alone?

The film’s second half (the lie occurs exactly at the midpoint) is tightly wound to ensure we cannot look away no matter how certain we are something even worse is on the horizon. Watson and Franciosi are amazing, their early friendship contrasted by their wordless glaring as though embroiled in a game of chicken that always finds the former’s Aileen turning in shame first. But what I loved the most is how the filmmakers never pretend this culture isn’t an intrinsic feature of the landscape—that the way forward won’t also be driven by dark secrets. It’s a somber, heart-crushing affair where dreams must forever remain unfulfilled fantasy.

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Emily Watson in GOD’S CREATURES, courtesy of A24.