Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Stacey Gregg
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Niamh Dornan, Jonjo O'Neill,
Martin McCann, Eileen O'Higgins
In Christina Choe's 2018 thriller
Nancy, Andrea Riseborough played a sociopathic woman who inveigles
her way into the lives of a couple by claiming she's their daughter who
was abducted three decades earlier. That movie was a clever subversion
of a long-standing thriller plotline whereby characters pretend to be a
long lost loved one, returned years later, sometimes in reincarnated
form. With writer/director Stacey Gregg's feature debut, the
Northern Ireland set Here Before, Riseborough finds herself on the other side of this dynamic, playing
a grieving mother who believes her dead daughter has returned in the
form of her new neighbours' child.
When Laura (Riseborough) meets the precocious Megan (Niamh Dornan), she develops an instant, initially innocent fondness. Megan's mother
Marie (Eileen O'Higgins) never seems to turn up to collect her
daughter from school, and so Laura begins bringing her home, with the
young girl often joining her family for fish fingers in the evening.
When Megan starts speaking cryptically about having been to nearby
places before – the local playground, a graveyard – Laura convinces
herself that Josie, the daughter she lost in a car accident, has somehow
returned in the form of this young girl.
This is one of those plotlines that's so well-worn at this point that
it all becomes about how the mystery is going to resolve itself. Has
Josie returned as Megan or is Laura being gaslit? It's a storyline that
was milked for all its worth over a season of Dallas when
Steve Forrest played a bloke who claimed to be the long thought dead
Jock Ewing, and it should probably have been retired after Jonathan
Glazer's Birth, which really felt like the last word on this particular plot
device.
Here Before doesn't add much of note beyond the
specificity of its setting. Like another recent Northern Irish thriller,
Cathy Brady's
Wildfire, it's about how impossible it is to heal old wounds when the past
lives beside you. Where Brady tackled this head on, Gregg sneaks it into
a familiar genre piece. Laura's obsession with Megan drives a wedge
between the two families, who are subtly divided along class lines as
nicely illustrated in a wide shot of the semi-detached houses, identical
save for the recency of their paint jobs.
Riseborough is as excellent as you'd expect, having made this sort of
role her bread and butter by this point. It's her portrayal of a woman
being driven mad by a desperate need to believe in something that seems
impossible that keeps us onboard with Here Before's otherwise by the numbers handling of its derivative plot. The movie
works best when it tells its story in grounded kitchen sink terms, but
too often Gregg gets distracted and adds in dream sequences that have
the dated feel of '90s music videos. Attempts to make us believe there's
a supernatural element to the story never quite convince, and when the
truth is revealed it underwhelms despite the best attempts of an
overblown soundtrack to add more import to the drama.
If you've never come across this plotline before, which is highly
unlikely, you may well find Here Before a gripping watch.
While it may not reinvent the wheel, it certainly keeps it rolling
thanks to Riseborough's turn and efficient if rote storytelling. But for
the rest of us, it all feels too familiar. We've been here before a few
too many times.
