‘Bring Them Down’ Review: A Blood-Soaked Irish Drama

A brutally violent directorial debut, Christopher Andrews’ rural Irish drama “Bring Them Down” veers between pitch-black humor and pervading melancholy. A tale of fathers, sons, and mutilated sheep, it toys with narrative point of view in “Rashomon”-like fashion, but keeps pressing questions of masculinity and cycles of sadness hovering just out of view. Fittingly, like its emotionally stunted male characters, it doesn’t confront these notions head on, but lets them quietly build in the form of a simmering blood feud that feels all-encompassing in the moment, but upon taking a step back, reveals a pitiable quality.

A brief but distressing prologue — told through alternating chaos and silence — reveals a car crash. Michael (Christopher Abbott), upon finding out that his mother had planned to leave his father, sped off in a fit of uncontrollable emotion and swerved off the road. His mother, in the passenger’s seat, was killed on impact. His then-girlfriend Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) was in the car as well, and was left with a pronounced scar down the left side of her face, a focused embodiment of the way women bear the brunt of men’s unchecked rage.

Years later, Michael lives with his demanding, paraplegic father, Ray (Colm Meaney), whose ram farm he tends to day and night. Caroline, as it happens, has now married Michael’s neighbor and competitor, Gary (Paul Ready), with whom she has a teenage son, Jack (Barry Keoghan). The weight of past traumas already leaves tension between the two families, which is only exacerbated when two of Michael’s sheep are found dead on Gary’s property. Before long, things escalate and cause further suspicion, when many more of Michael’s livestock are badly maimed, leaving him to put them down, one by one.

By unveiling this silent storm from Michael’s perspective, “Bring Them Down” creates a disconcerting aura about Gary and Jack — accompanied by a thumping, off-kilter…