Here Before Review: A Tightly Controlled Thriller Undone by a Gotcha Reveal

Andrea Riseborough gives an impressively understated performance in writer-director Stacey Gregg’s Here Before as Laura, a grieving mother from Northern Ireland. So understated, in fact, that for a good portion of the film you may not even expect the tremendously unbelievable ace that the screenplay has up its sleeve.

The death of Laura’s young daughter, Josie, has taken its toll on her and her family. The woman’s husband, Brendan (Jonjo O’Neill), is clearly doing his best to return to life as usual, while their son, Tadhg (Lewis McAskie), is distant, either because of the loss of his sister or because he’s a just a run-of-the-mill teenager, maybe both. Laura has been to therapy, and everything certainly isn’t fine, though it’s perhaps as fine as it can be under the circumstances. That is, until another family—including a young girl named Megan (Niamh Dornan), who’s about as old as Josie would have been—moves into the vacant unit of their duplex.

Gregg’s feature-length directorial debut is a by and large tightly controlled work, exemplified by its use of camera movement to convey subtle details about the characters’ lives. In one scene, we watch Laura at the gym on an exercise bike. Later, we see Megan in her decorated bedroom right before the camera seems to pan through the duplex’s separating wall to a drab, disused storage space on the other side. Laura is there, along with some boxes and another exercise bike; without a word, the viewer can extrapolate that it was once Josie’s room, and that Laura goes to the gym because she can’t stand to be within this space.

Here Before uses costuming to similar effect. Early on, we sense Laura’s warm, friendly attitude toward Megan, even a certain connection between them, reflected in how they seem to instinctively wear similarly colored clothing. But later, when Laura runs into Megan at the supermarket, their color preferences are out of sync. As if to emphasize the other characters’ growing discomfort with how Laura keeps inserting Megan into her life, Gregg depicts the girl in a red coat that instead matches the outfit worn by her mother, Marie (Eileen O’Higgins).

It’s clear to both families that Laura is projecting her memories of Josie onto Megan, and she grows defensive when others try to broach the topic. Amid the rising tensions, Here Before builds its mystery as Megan exhibits odd resemblances to Josie and mentions things that, as someone new to this suburban patch of Belfast, she should reasonably have no knowledge of. As such, we’re invited to wonder, like Laura, if Megan is, if not an outright reincarnation of Josie, somehow possessed. Laura remarks on how absurd her speculations sound, but there seems to be no other explanation. And once the film offers the alternative explanation in its final minutes, it falls to pieces for predicating itself on such a formidably idiotic twist.

From its gray Irish landscape to the unsettling ways in which it frames mundane objects like play equipment in an overgrown backyard, Here Before initially channels the austerity of “prestige” horror movies. As Laura’s obsession grows and she breaks further boundaries, the film undergoes a conspicuous stylistic shift, as if to prepare us for its eventual and outrageous rug pull. The moody soundtrack gives way to bizarre, jaunty children’s tunes and the color palette seems to brighten, as though Laura’s outlook on life is becoming sunnier.

But it’s not enough. Though Here Before ends well before it can explore the fallout of its preposterous conceit, an extremely charitable read of Gregg’s film might frame it as some sort of commentary on how grief can warp our perceptions and beliefs. The more likely explanation, however, is that it’s yet another story that, in trying to play “gotcha” with its audience, trips over itself and totally unravels in the process.