God’s Creatures Review: A Gloomy, Spread-Thin Irish Tragedy Anchored by Strong Performances

The small, unnamed Irish fishing village where Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis’s God’s Creatures takes place is a familiar one. It’s made up of a tight-knit, firmly patriarchal community, whose members cling to rituals and beliefs that may seem arcane to the outside world. The men do the fishing, while the women work in the oyster factory. Thoughts of either gender equality or escaping for a more fulfilling life feel as distant as a warm, sunny day.

The milieu’s nagging sense of familiarity is somewhat eased by Holmer and Davis’s detail-oriented approach, namely their attentiveness to the very specific work that goes on in the factory and nearby oyster farms. Chayse Irvin’s cinematography is suitably stark and moody, and frequent cutaways to the choppy waters of the sea and cloud-riddled sky above readily emphasize the eternal monotony of this rain-swept corner of the world.

It’s in the film’s spectacular sound design, though, that we’re given a more thorough sense of life in fishing village, from the sounds of tree branches rattling in the wind and oyster shells clacking as they constantly collide in the factory to the lapping of waves and sea shanties sung in crowded bars. These sounds are all heightened in the mix, creating an immersive soundscape.

But for all its impressively rendered aesthetic qualities, the film’s story feels rote. The shaky plot revolves around the twentysomething Brian (Paul Mescal), who returns to the village after seven years in Australia, during which time he fell out of touch with his family. It’s clear upon his unexpected return that tensions still run high with his father (Declan Conlon), who can barely muster a handshake. Luckily, his doting mother, Aileen (Emily Watson), is there to keep the peace, forgiving Brian for his absence because she’s just happy that he’s home to stay.

Throughout, we’re given no clues as to what happened in the past, so when Brian is charged with sexual assault and uses his mother as an alibi, we’re left to wonder what may have occurred that led him to take off for Australia. After the allegations are made against Brian, God’s Creatures focuses on much of the town’s unsurprisingly misogynist reaction to them and, even more so, on Aileen’s gradual reckoning with the fact that her son may be far more damaged and sinister than she ever could have believed. It’s a compelling twist on a familiar tale to focus primarily on the mother of the accused, but it also gives short shrift to the victim, Sarah (Aisling Franciosi).

The film unfolds in relatively predictable fashion, which undercuts the sense of grandiosity and suspense that the filmmakers so clearly try to engender with slow zooms and the score’s arrhythmic percussion. It’s a shame because the actors deliver fantastic performances, especially Watson and Franciosi, who each find ways to subtly communicate very different forms of disappointment, disillusionment, and suppressed anger, and often without much in the way of dialogue. But there’s only so much the actors can do to express the interiority of characters who are never fleshed out beyond the general anguish that their hardscrabble lives bring them.

The somber, self-serious tone of God’s Creatures grows increasingly oppressive, and speaks to the filmmakers’ inability or unwillingness to mine anything but heartache from their story. Even a film as bleak as Manchester by the Sea made room for levity via the trope of the perpetually horny teenager. Here, the uniformly strong cast and the directors’ illuminating array of sensorial details are enough to keep God’s Creatures afloat, but one wishes it was more willing to pierce its protagonists’ icy exteriors and get at the more complex emotions within.