‘Bring Them Down’ Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: A Tragic Look At Toxic Masculinity
Writer and director Christopher Andrews’ new film Bring Them Down opens with a literal crash. We see a young Caroline (Grace Daly) in the backseat of a car. She watches on as Peggy (Susan Lynch) hurriedly tells her unseen son, Mikey, that she has to leave his father. As Peggy tries to get her son to understand why this is a desperate bid for her survival, the car begins to speed up. We then watch in horror as they both plead for him to slow down before the life-changing wreck occurs. Mikey’s mother dies because of his actions, but his girlfriend survives. However, both women are victims of a young man who made a terrible decision that yielded tragic results.
Bring Them Down jumps years ahead from that jarring opening. We meet adult Michael (Christopher Abbott), a man who still lives with his mother’s death at his own hands. He’s also the sole caregiver for his dad, Ray (Colm Meaney). Both men are isolated from the rest of their town for various reasons. Michael takes care of their livestock and keeps the booming family business running. He seems to feel repressed remorse for his fatal choice that cost his mother her life and scarred his ex-girlfriend. While the family business is successful, a cloud of unhappiness and resentment looms over the house he shares with Ray.
Also Read: ‘Strange Harvest: Occult Murder In The Inland Empire’ Is A Pitch-Perfect Found Footage Film [Fantastic Fest 2024 Review]
Michael has seemingly put his inner demons to sleep and is serving his own form of penance. However, there are still violent embers residing inside of him. They ignite once he finds out Gary (Paul Ready) and his son Jack (Keoghan) have stolen some of his sheep. This sparks a volatile pissing contest between a group of men who would rather escalate things than use their words. This is how we find out Michael hasn’t healed so much as just gone into hiding after what he did. To further complicate matters, Jack is the son of Caroline (now played by Nora-Jane Noone). She has a new life but still has scars on her face to remind her of her harrowing near-death experience.
Bring Them Down is focused on male ego, toxic masculinity, and how men would rather blow their entire lives up than hug their inner moppet. The women and animals they kill along the way seem like collateral damage in a bid to perform their ideas of masculinity. However, no one manages to sneak in a solid performance as the one woman with more than one scene. She excellently portrays a woman who survived her ex-partner and is trying to forgive but can never forget. Caroline is practically the patron saint of women who learned the hard way that just because you love a man does not mean you are safe with him. She has physical evidence as well as memories of what Mikey did to his own mother for simply trying to escape her awful husband.
Also Read: In ‘Bone Lake’, Love Hurts [Fantastic Fest 2024 Review]
Andrews gives Barry Keoghan and Abbott an interesting enough playground amid a violent family drama. As usual, they both deliver and make it hard for viewers to lose interest. This is especially helpful when things slow down for a smidge too long. Most of the film’s appeal is watching these two characters escalate matters to a violent and tragic ending. They are different sides of the same coin from two different generations.
Jack is seen, on numerous occasions, watching Caroline and Gary fight without their notice. He knows how bad the family finances are because they yell about it. Gary’s business is not going as well as Ray and Micheal’s, which is another thing that eats at the men in this home. Jack also knows his mom is painfully unhappy in her marriage and wants to leave. He doesn’t understand Gary’s accusations of her still being in love with Michael are based on his insecurity rather than facts. So, instead of using his words, Jack makes a terrible decision that sets in motion a chain of events that results in so many lives being changed forever.
Also Read: ‘Apartment 7A’ Is A Beautiful and Harrowing Reclamation of the Past [Fantastic Fest 2024 Review]
If nothing else, Bring Them Down offers fascinating parallels between these warring characters that beg to be studied. Jack and Michael are cut from the same cloth. It would be easy to write them off as Momma’s boys with sociopathic tendencies. However, the movie encourages viewers to explore why so many men are fundamentally broken. These two characters are decades apart and unrelated, but they fall into the same rhythm as most men we see on the news every week. Far too many men choose violence over communication way too often.
This is the reason so many male celebrities get away with terrorizing their partners in the public eye but continue being leading men. This is why predators who brag about assaulting women can run for President of the United States not once but twice. The human race constantly fails to ask them to be better or, at the very least, hold them accountable for their crimes. Men who should be in prison for awful crimes get coddled because they’re considered “nice guys”. Meanwhile, society forgets their victims if they don’t make them the targets of their rage. It’s easier to make excuses for violent men than deal with how communities raised them to be monsters.
Keoghan has made a career playing troubled young men who captivate us, and this role is no exception. He excels at channeling youthful energy and brings a boyish physicality to Jack. It’s so easy to forget that he’s in his 30s. While Keoghan looks younger than his years, the illusion fails because the actors playing his parents look like his slightly older siblings. I feel the people who complained during Saltburn will have difficulty swallowing this when he is standing next to no one.
Also Read: ‘Never Let Go’: Alexandre Aja’s Modern Fairy Tale Misses The Mark [Fantastic Fest 2024 Review]
Bring Them Down sees Keoghan give us arguably his most frustrating character yet. Jack spends most of the movie making awful decisions from a place of misplaced rage and sadness (not unlike Mikey’s fateful choice up top). These choices lead to tensions rising between him and Gary and Gary and Micheal. They also awaken the worst in himself and Mikey, culminating in an unexpectedly violent and bloody ending.
Bring Them Down is one of the movies you need to sit with for a spell. It also continues both Abbott and Keoghan’s individual streaks of oddly troubling cinema. Most surprisingly, it is a fairly solid thriller, although the film simmered too long before boiling over. I also like this cast, but I wish there was more inclusivity because I have seen so many all-white casts this year that I want to scream. However, between the family drama and the build-up to a surprisingly bloody conclusion, it did grab my attention.
-
Bring Them Down
Summary
Bring Them Down is one of the movies you cannot help but to sit with for a spell. It also continues both Abbott and Keoghan’s individual streaks of oddly troubling cinema. Most surprisingly, it is a fairly solid first feature from Andrews.
Categorized:Reviews
