Bring Them Down

A surprisingly nerve-racking psychological thriller about warring Irish sheep herders. The stakes may seem low, but the effort by cast and crew crests the mountaintop.

I’ll admit, a few minutes into “Bring Them Down” I was thinking to myself, ‘Is this really going to be a whole movie about warring Irish sheep herders?’

Not to be dismissive of their vocation, but the stakes seemed rather… low to justify an entire feature film. But before long, my disdain turned to genuine anxiety as this nerve-racking psychologically thriller winds up the tension.

Written and directed by Chris Andrews, his first feature film after an apprenticeship as a cameraman and director of short films, “Bring Them Down” is quite skillful at manipulating the audience’s emotions and expectations. Even though it’s a movie about a small conflict, cast and crew bring outsized effort with results that crest the mountaintop.

Christopher Abbott plays Michael O’Shea, a rather sullen fellow I’m guessing in his late 30s or so. Twenty years earlier he was involved in a tragic accident in which he was at fault, and clearly the burden still weighs upon him. He’s the sort of guy with a 1,000-yard stare who doesn’t say or do very much, but other sheep men respect him… and perhaps are a little bit frightened.

The O’Shea sheep are considered prime stock, as they’ve been doing this on the same lands for 500 years. Traditionalists, they speak only Gaelic in the house and let their sheep free range. Mikey hikes the green hills every day tending to his flock with his loyal sheepdog.

It’s a one-man operation as his dad, Ray (Colm Meaney), sits decrepit all day listening to the radio, waiting and waiting for the approval of his double knee replacement surgery to come through. Still, he considers himself lord of the manor and Mikey knuckles under to his occasional roars.

They’ve been in a running feud for years with the Keelys, who share range rights to the same hills. Occasionally the sheep will commingle, but they spray-paint a brand on them — pink for the O’Sheas, blue for the Keelys — to tell them apart.

As the story opens the Keely patriarch, Gary (Paul Ready), calls up to let Ray know they found two of his prize breeding rams dead and brought them down to their farm. Mikey drives over to check it out, and is informed by Gary’s somewhat dim son, Jack (Barry Keoghan), that he put the carcasses ‘into the slurry’ rather than keeping them for the O’Sheas to inspect.

(Presumably a pit where waste matter is left to decompose and be used as fertilizer.)

It all sounds rather fishy, but Mikey is also somewhat flummoxed by the presence of Gary’s wife, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), with whom he had a young romance himself years ago. Her welcoming expression and dropped information that she’s moving to Cork for a job seem a pretty obvious invitation, but the scars on her cheek are a beacon reminding of his past transgressions.

Things go on from there, with a disagreement at the livestock market resulting in a tense road rage confrontation, and so on. The rest is best left fresh to discover for yourself.

What is really interesting is about a third of the way through the movie, filmmaker Andrews essentially hits the rewind button and we get to see the entire conflict replay, but this time from Jack’s perspective. It becomes clear he has his own father/son issues with Gary, and his reliance on his mother for protection and nurturing is similar to Mikey’s stolen youth.

Early on, Mikey is clearly posited as the hero of the story and the Keelys as the villains. But seeing it again from a different angle, we realize the antagonists are much more alike than either might grasp.

Both Mikey and Jack do some pretty despicable things in the course of the story at the behest of their father, or at least their interpretation of what they think their pa wants, squeezed through the prism of their dysfunctional relationships.

Oddly, we wind up feeling both sympathy and repulsion for each of them.

Keoghan, an Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” — and probably also should’ve gotten one for last year’s “Saltburn” — has carved out a niche of playing off-kilter and unsettling young men. He does it again well here, and Abbott in some ways inhabits a character who’s like an older version of Jack.

They are irrevocably tied to the land and their respective familial obligations, but seem emotionally unmoored from those around them.

Another admission: I had to turn off the movie a couple of times to take a breath. That’s a reflection of both the psychological intensity of the storytelling, as well as depictions of harm to animals — something I have a level of phobia about. So, trigger warnings for those who need them.

I was not expecting much out of “Bring Them Down.” In many ways, it is such a small movie. But it’s very skilled at making a insignificant conflict seem all-encompassing and even profound.

When the wolf attacks the herd, you need a beast with equal ferocity to fend it off. But then, where does the true threat lie?