Proper from its opening moments, sheep herding drama Convey Them Down hurls its viewers right into a waking nightmare.
A automotive careens down a winding highway in western Eire. Inside, a lady within the passenger seat (Susan Lynch) tells her driving son Michael (Christopher Abbott, Wolf Man, Sanctuary) that she is leaving his father. His response? To hurry as much as a harmful diploma. Author-director Christopher Andrews by no means exhibits us Michael on this opening, solely his mom and his girlfriend Caroline’s (Nora-Jane Noone) rising panic at his recklessness. We’re locked in with them, hurtling by means of a daunting scenario past our management. Andrews escalates that terror to a fever pitch earlier than the inevitable occurs: Michael crashes the automotive, killing his mom and completely scarring Caroline’s face.
The crash is only the start of Convey Them Down‘s violent tragedy, an explosive begin to a directorial debut that simmers with panic and dread. As Andrews brings that pressure to a boil, he crafts a vicious saga of feuding households, poisonous masculinity, and the poor, harmless sheep caught in the midst of all of it.
What’s Convey Them Down about?
Christopher Abbott and Colm Meaney in “Bring Them Down.”
Credit score: Patrick Redmond / MUBI
Convey Them Down picks up a number of years after the opening automotive crash. Michael is now the only caretaker for his ailing, belligerent father Ray (Colm Meaney), and he is additionally taken over the household’s centuries-old sheep herding enterprise. He and Ray share their mountain with one other sheep herding household, made up of patriarch Gary (Paul Prepared), Caroline, and their son Jack (Barry Keoghan, Saltburn, The Banshees of Inisherin). Slight animosity already bubbles between Gary and Ray, however when Jack steals two of Michael’s rams and claims they’ve died, he blows the households’ dispute large open. Taunts give technique to violence, which supplies technique to a brutal quest for vengeance on Michael’s finish.
With Michael’s objective in thoughts, Convey Them Down may simply be a simple vengeance story. However Andrews opts for a Rashomon-style perspective swap that provides up each Michael and Jack’s factors of view on the transpiring occasions. That tactic, full with Abbott and Keoghan’s performances, makes Convey Them Down a tense two-header.
Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan go head-to-head in Convey Them Down.
Christopher Abbott, Barry Keoghan, and Nora Jane-Noone in “Bringe Them Down.”
Credit score: Nick Cooke / MUBI
Abbott and Keoghan have each carved out area for themselves as daring actors unafraid of stranger roles, so it is a pleasure to look at them sq. off within the intense strain cooker of Convey Them Down.
Mashable High Tales
Abbott’s Michael is a quiet loner, however the opening automotive crash sequence proves that his quietude hides a seething, reckless rage. Caroline’s scar stays bodily proof of this, an omnipresent reminder that, whereas we’d really feel sympathy for Michael for his sheep troubles, he nonetheless has a lot to atone for. There’s the sense that him caring for his father — the very man his mom was making an attempt to flee — is a part of that, particularly since Ray berates Michael at each flip.
As Jack, Keoghan’s position is twofold. From Michael’s perspective, Jack is a slippery antagonist hellbent on wrecking his life. As soon as we see Jack’s viewpoint, we understand he is a determined screw-up working on the whims of others, like his father Gary or his cousin Lee (Aaron Heffernan, Brassic). Jack would not perceive the results of what he is achieved till it is too late. By his eyes, Michael turns into a quietly menacing drive, recalibrating our notion of the person we spent the primary half of the movie with. Each Abbott and Keoghan work wonders with the angle switches, discovering new sides of two very sophisticated males who could also be extra alike than they’d know.
In any case, Jack’s want to please and assist Gary calls to thoughts Michael’s response to his mom wanting to go away Ray: He would do something, regardless of how terrible, to appease his father. That cycle of sons doing the unthinkable for his or her fathers is the center of Convey Them Down‘s examination of poisonous masculinity. Michael has already been warped by his relationship with Ray, whose horrible remedy of his son doubtless stems from his personal father, and his father earlier than him. Jack, a number of years youthful than Michael, might not be too far behind.
Historical past continues to repeat itself elsewhere with Caroline. Like Michael’s mom, Caroline is planning on leaving her husband, however she retains getting drawn into Gary and Jack’s rivalry with Ray and Michael. She’s an harmless caught up on this storm, and he or she’s not the one one.
The sheep scenes in Convey Them Down usually are not for the faint of coronary heart.
Christopher Abbott in “Bring Them Down.”
Credit score: Patrick Redmond/MUBI
Michael’s mom and Caroline aren’t the one casualties of Convey Them Down‘s males. Michael’s sheep herd suffers tremendously, in a grotesque animal mutilation scene that will already be one of many yr’s most upsetting sequences. Keep in mind when Jenny the donkey died on account of a bitter feud in The Banshees of Inisherin? The destiny of Convey Them Down‘s sheep makes that seem like a fairy story.
Other than the occasional shot of bloody flesh and wool, Andrews lets a lot of the sheep mutilation play out by means of sound. Hannah Peel’s thumping, percussion-heavy rating is pure sonic dread, whereas Gert Janssen’s sound design is a stomach-churning mixture of squelching and sheep bleating. (Don’t fret: In accordance with Convey Them Down‘s press notes, Andrews made the distressed sheep noises himself, which have been then edited.)
Your complete sequence, just like the opening automotive crash, appears like a grounded nightmare from which there isn’t a escape. Neither Michael nor Jack can outrun the sheep’s ache both, culminating in a darkly humorous climax that blurs the strains between human and animal. There is no forgetting the horrors they’ve wrought or their near-pitiable closing confrontation, simply as there is no forgetting Convey Them Down.
Convey Them Down hits theaters Feb. 7.
