REVIEW: Bring Them Down [2025]

Rating: R | Runtime: 106 minutes
Release Date: February 7th, 2025 (Ireland/USA)
Studio: MUBI
Director(s): Christopher Andrews
Writer(s): Christopher Andrews / Christopher Andrews & Jonathan Hourigan (story)

You’ve had a part to play in this.

It can all be traced back to the sins of the father. Not just because of what Ray (Colm Meaney) does to spark this latest bit of violence, but because his wrath is what started everything two decades prior. It was his oppressive nature that drove his wife (Susan Lynch’s Peggy) to want to leave him and it was the pain endured by his son Michael (Christopher Abbott) that turned her decision into unforgivable tragedy. The rage. The shame. Maybe Michael was trying to kill himself in response to the news that fateful day, and both Peggy and his girlfriend just happened to be in the car. Either way, nothing was ever the same.

Even so, writer/director Christopher Andrews ensures to leave the past in the past insofar as its direct ramifications. Sure, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) ultimately left Michael as a result of what occurred and eventually began a family with Gary (Paul Ready) and their son Jack (Barry Keoghan). Sure, Peggy’s absence made certain that Michael could never leave the family farm out of guilt and responsibility to his father. But, despite being neighbors, they did not cross paths again. Whether intentionally or not, they kept to themselves so as not to have to face the horror of that day. His sadness. Her scar. It was better to put it all behind them.

So, when Bring Them Down forces them to meet, it feels like destiny. Not because of the real reasons behind the visit, but because they do seem happy (if awkward) to see the other. Unfortunately, Michael’s business isn’t about Caroline. It’s about her husband. Apparently Jack found two of Michael’s sheep dead on the hillside and Gary called to give the bad news. Ray demands his son retrieve the bodies for proof, but Michael only finds Jack explaining how he already put them in the slurry to avoid potential disease. What should have ended the reunion cleanly, however, takes a left turn when Michael’s attempt to buy two new sheep at market leads him to discover his missing livestock in Gary’s pen. What happens next proves inevitable.

Andrews delivers a bleak thriller that can only end in brutality once Michael and Gary dig in their feet. The first act unfolds from the former’s vantage as he seeks to understand why his gate is mangled and his rams are missing. It follows him as he struggles to be the “man” his father demands of him while desperately clinging onto what remains of his innocence after the accident that claimed his mother. From quiet sorrow to silent rage, Michael changes from solitary shepherd to broken killer right before things rewind a bit further to present act two from Jack’s eyes. It’s here that we learn the causes that went into the effects we’d just witnessed. We learn who damaged the gate. Who stole the sheep. Who ruthlessly murdered an entire flock.

And then the third act ties it all together by revealing just how similar Michael and Jack are. Two sensitive souls who grew up in harsh surroundings around bitter men who allow themselves to be pushed to the edge of morality to survive the only way they know how. Michael has already succumbed to his fate courtesy of the prologued tragedy. Jack is losing himself to it now. The question then is whether it’s too late for the boy. Have his actions taken him so far from the path his mother wants for him that there is no turning back? Has the trail of corpses left in his wake made it so his victim has no choice but to retaliate in kind? Or will Michael seeing Jack as a mirrored image of himself replace malice with hard-earned empathy?

It’s a truly grim drama with blood and anger dripping off every frame. Ray’s vitriol (Meaney’s look upon realizing he must repeat himself in English for Gary to understand him is priceless). Caroline’s frustration (Noone provides the character a fire of someone who’s been hurt before and refuses to let it happen again). Michael and Jack’s pent-up resentment (Abbott and Keoghan are both so good at playing scared men forced into crossing a line that demands cold acceptance only to find themselves tortured instead). Yes, the ending brings a touch of hopefulness in its ability to show a capacity for mercy, but even its inclusion is a result of shattered and damned souls. The cycle might finally be over, but the damage has already been done.