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“Love thy fucking neighbor,” scoffs Gary (Paul Ready) as he crashes through the pasture gate of his longtime rival Ray (Colm Meaney). This act of brazen, testosterone-fueled frustration sets the action of Bring Them Down in motion, though it isn’t actually shown in stark detail until the film’s midway point.
The feature debut of writer-director Christopher Andrews, this Ireland-set thriller is steeped in Catholicism, with integral references to biblical figures and religious doctrine. A petty feud between neighbors—on one side, affluent shepherds; on the other, struggling small-town farmers—magnifies these allusions. In this sense, Bring Them Down is both modern and utterly primeval in scope.
Inheriting this generational quarrel are Michael (Christopher Abbott) and Jack (Barry Keoghan), the respective sons of Ray and Gary. The film’s opening divulges a horrible accident from years ago for which Michael is responsible, an incident that left his mother dead and girlfriend Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) seriously injured. Now (unhappily) married to Gary, Caroline serves as both a doting and stern mother to Jack and as the only player intimately aware of the bitter cracks in both families’ foundations.
After Gary’s explicit trespass, Jack escalates the situation by stealing two rams from their neighbors’ prized flock. While Ray retains his position as the de facto patriarch, his deteriorating knees have rendered him housebound. To prove his worth as Ray’s eventual successor, Michael obeys his father’s commands to the fullest extent. So when Michael discovers that several sheep have been intentionally mutilated by unseen perpetrators in the dead of night, Ray’s snarl to “bring me their fucking heads” is taken literally.
Bring Them Down’s title references Michael’s decision to herd the flock down the hill after the initial act of thievery, thus driving them further away from Gary’s property and, ostensibly, making them easier to guard. As the film unfolds, though, it’s clear that livestock is no longer the primary concern. Drawing blood and establishing control are the only consolations for both families; it’s clear that resentments have been slowly amassing for long before these petty actions called for drastic vigilantism.
Although Bring Them Down follows Michael’s point of view from the offset, the role of protagonist switches over to Jack halfway through the story—just as things are getting awfully grim and bloody—which essentially winds back the clock and allows events to unfold from his perspective. Aside from providing a more holistic view of what actually occurs, this also forces us to scrap whatever biases have naturally formed regarding whose actions are most justifiable. Cinematographer Nick Cooke (This Is Going To Hurt) doesn’t add any superfluous signifiers to differentiate between these two worldviews, utilizing the same visual language for the entirety of Bring Them Down. There is no way to inadvertently sway viewers toward one character’s cause versus the other’s—they are merely two vantage points of a shared reality.
Yet there is an inherent contrast between Michael and Jack as individuals. While his family’s long-held status as premium shepherds has garnered a level of financial comfort, Michael also honors his legacy by often speaking in fluent Gaelic with his father, tethering their connection to the land and its resources. The much younger Jack, on the other hand, is subjected to constant anxiety over his family’s insubstantial income, which has also caused a deep rift in his parents’ relationship.
Though it does have friction with Keoghan’s pronounced Irishness compared to the American Abbott’s self-described “Euro-mutt” ancestry, the choice to emphasize the legacy of language by way of these two characters makes perfect sense: for Michael, inheritance is the only way forward; for Jack, forgoing tradition is the only way to gain a sliver of the pie for himself. Jack enters most scenes while listening to abrasive rap music and accompanied by his Irish-Pakistani best mate (Aaron Heffernan), details that dually warn against closed-mindedness as well as the total dismissal of Irish cultural heritage.
In Bring Them Down, the central story of vengeance is as ancient as the land it’s told on. For a feature debut, Christopher Andrews spins an impressive yarn that is neither reductive in its appreciation for God-fearing anecdotes nor overwrought with violence for the sake of titillation. Buttressed by formidable performances by Abbott and Keoghan, the film isn’t so much focused on lambs unwittingly led to slaughter, but on innocents victimized by the vindictive hands of humans.
Director: Christopher Andrews
Writer: Christopher Andrews
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Christopher Abbott, Nora-Jane Noone, Paul Ready, Aaron Heffernan, Conor McNeill, Susan Lynch, Colm Meaney
Release Date: February 7, 2025
