Here Before

SXSW 2021 Greetings again from the darkness. Grief can be the most powerful and dangerous emotion we experience as humans. Anger and joy come and go, but real grief seeps into our marrow and becomes part of our being. Writer-director Stacey Gregg wisely tackles the topic with the assistance of the always excellent Andrea Riseborough (a resume loaded with strong projects) as Laura, a mother who begins to believe that her deceased daughter Josie has been reincarnated as the new neighbors' daughter, Megan (Niamh Dornan).

Ms. Gregg expertly builds tension and doubt through the film's first half, and throws a terrific curve ball in the final act ... one I kick myself and applaud the filmmaker for not seeing it coming. There is an awkwardness between the two families forced together by a shared dwelling wall. That awkwardness only builds as Laura continually oversteps boundaries when it comes to Megan, who seems to know entirely too many details when it comes to Josie's death.

Megan's parents, Marie (Eileen O'Higgins) and Chris (Martin McCann), are from a different socio-economic class than their neighbors, and the uncomfortable connection extends to Laura's husband, Brendon (Jonjo O'Neill) and son, Tadhg (Lewis McAkie). Whether it's in the front yard, at school, or the grocery story, each time these families cross paths leaves us with weird vibes and feeling more confused. Is something supernatural at play here?

The cinematography from Chloe Thomson is superb, and composer Adam Janota Bzowski is pitch perfect is giving us just enough at the right moments. Set in Belfast, this is a gripping thriller with terrific performances throughout. Stacey Gregg makes it look all too easy with her first feature film.

This is a good movie that has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 86.%. On IMDB it has a 5.7 and when I read the reviews there are a lot of comments about it being 'boring' and 'dragging'. It's occurred to me these are things children say all the time. Lately, I've also noticed that any grown up movies that have any sophistication, at all, are getting bad scores on IMDB.

Maybe IMDB should start separating reviews from people 16 and under so they're not ruining the scores of good adult fare. So, endeth my rant.

This movie is a very good, low key, thriller that has you guessing right up to the end. When what's really going on is revealed it's a palm to the forehead moment. Andrea Riseborough is fantastic and this is a very good first feature film from writer/director, Stacey Gregg. Definitely worth a watch!

Slow with the use of too many 'flashbacks'. Not sure if it was the soundtrack or the Northern Irish accents, but difficult to follow what was being said at times. Unexpected but improbable twist at the end.

On paper, this should be a good film: a psychological thriller, centred on grief and on the tension between common sense and being desperate to believe in something beyond reality. However, other than some pretty decent acting, the film fails in every other respect.

The atmosphere and suspense doesn't properly build up, it's rather deflated throughout the film (it doesn't even properly pick up in the third act), neither does the psychological portrait of the main heroine. It's supposed to mainly be about her slow descent into grief-fuelled paranoia, but that gets side-tracked by a lack of coherence in every other character's behaviour.

It might have worked if it had been entirely focused on the main heroine's point of view, but instead we jump around following a bunch of characters whose motives and internal worlds are entirely opaque, being given nothing to work with. And then at the very end, where you hope for everything to finally fall into place, the resolution is anticlimactic and not particularly believable either.

A mother who lost her daughter starts believing that her daughter may have come back to life thru the little girl that lives next door with her parents. Throughout their exhange, the girl reminds the mother of things her and her daughter have done together when she was alive in certain places and the mother is becoming more convinced that her daughter has come back from the dead and now living thru her neighbors daughter. The process of the big reveal does drag a bit but the revelation off all things become very clear and in the end without any spoilers, the mother is left devastated and I'll leave it right there. A solid one time (only) watch. Slow but definitely meaningful.