Reincarnation is believed in by a third of the American population. What is it that makes them believe? Is it for instance the tale of James Leininger who when he was four years old, woke up crying about plane crashes almost every night and knew very advanced details about how planes work and also World War II; he even swore he had flown off an aircraft carrier named the USS Natoma (which was a real warship from WW2)? Or maybe you have heard stories of toddlers who play piano nearly perfectly without having undergone any lessons, those with impressive golf swings or talk in unusual accents or even languages they could not have encountered before. we are exploring Here Before movie here.
It might be something more personal such as the haunting new mystery thriller Here Before where a woman begins to think her dead child has been reborn as their next-door neighbor’s kid. But Stacey Gregg’s debut full-length film is not for “believers” in reincarnation; this isn’t just some bit on The Dr. Oz Show. However, it does also not exclusively appeal to skeptics either. Instead, though, it takes an entirely realistic and gradual approach to how someone might truly come to hold this belief, not only from a theological or conceptual standpoint but also with an intensely deep and personal conviction.
This owes much to Andrea Riseborough’s portrayal of Laura, the mother who lost her daughter in a car accident many years ago yet remains shattered –and sincerely healing—since then. She appears fine on screen: she gardens (maybe metaphorically digging up her trauma), goes out for dinners/drinks with her husband, plays games with her son, and drops him off at school; in fact everything seems like she is in a good place all things considered. There is a certain grace about Riseborough’s depiction of her which she employed brilliantly while playing Emma Stone’s love interest (a role she shared with Birdman) in The Battle of Sexes.
This has often been seen in her performances, helping to raise the game of actors like Tom Cruise, Michael Keaton, Steve Buscemi and many others. However, whenever she takes center stage, she becomes the focal point even when sharing screen space with people like Clive Owen (Shadow Dancer) or in a collective anthology series (“Crocodile,” Nordic noir installment of Black Mirror). In the amazing body horror movie Possessor for instance Riseborough gave some of the most amazing acting done in horror cinema which is why she was sought as the villain in The Crow remake. As quoted by Brent Hankins from The Lamplight Review, she is “at the top of her game” effortlessly negotiating through Laura’s many emotional twists.
Laura loves her husband Brendan and son Tadgh, and obviously loved and was devastated by the loss of her daughter Josie. Life has a tendency of going on regardless of otherwise (and cyclical) world-shattering events, and Riseborough does a great job of showing how Laura can simultaneously carry her grief and trauma while also plodding ahead and trying to make the best of things. When new neighbors move in, she doesn’t look at their daughter Megan as anyone out of the ordinary; she doesn’t make any immediate correlation between her and Laura’s own daughter. The film is intent on not belittling its protagonist and succumbing to the many tropes of films that depict obsession or insensitively show a character (usually a woman) ‘going crazy.’ Gregg’s direction and Riseborough’s performance ensure that Laura is not a caricature, but rather a real person who slowly develops a curiosity that could lead to dangerous places.
Laura grows into a somewhat maternal relationship with Megan, giving her rides home when the girl’s mother fails to pick her up from school, and offering to cook dinner for her. However, Megan says and does strange little things that are similar to Josie, which seem like more than coincidences– she comments on the cemetery near where Josie is buried and the road on which she died, she asks for the same ketchup smiley-face on her sandwich that Josie liked, and she draws pictures of herself as part of Laura’s family describing Tadgh as “her brother”. She even knows intricate details about the playground Josie used to visit despite never having been there herself.
Tension develops regarding if Megan actually knows these things from some kind of supernatural place or a past life, or is simply a child lying or playing games. This causes a mounting amount of emotional distress for Laura who begins questioning what reality is in relation to those around hеr аnd past lives, аll of whiсh, in turn, affects her familial connections. If Megan isn’t the reincarnated girl, then she’s a devious and malicious little child (à la Oscar-winner The White Ribbon), unless something entirely else is going on.
The film points to clues that envelop the proceedings in a sense of mystery, creating suspicion and paranoia regarding nearly every character, which almost emulates how Laura herself feels. Here Before is constructed with uncertainty at its core, artfully developing scenes and editing in flashes of memory which gaslight the audience the same way that Laura is. The dark and melancholic score from Adam Janota Bzowski compliments this perfectly, as does a bizarre musical montage with a surprising moment of horror. Snippets of dialogue and lingering shots enhance the feeling that something is going on just out of reach, and whether it’s supernatural, happenstance or something more malicious is teased and manipulated throughout the course of the film.
At first, this starts as a tense family story that is at once transformed into a gradual but simmering psychological enigma and in the end an incredibly nerve-wracking thriller while still being just a small movie often with its claustrophobic constraints. The majority of Chloe’s shots throughout this film put viewers in enclosed spaces with many people, such as cars, full classrooms and kitchens among other things to show how one can be caught up in their own head while having to engage with people or ideas they would rather shy away from. Laura does not want to become obsessed and initially, she doesn’t believe in reincarnation either; however, she has so many inexplicable experiences that send her on those journeys again and again making her confront that pain and suffering that Laura thought were over.
These kinds of traumas, and the strong women who grapple with them, are part of Gregg’s background who grew up at the tail end of The Troubles. In an interview with the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, the director said: “So growing up in Northern Ireland through the 80s and 90s for me this whole landscape is like a landscape of post-traumatic stress.” “I mean when I looked around as a child I was surrounded by strong women who navigated that trauma and grief often times – the sort of stoicism that I witnessed and hard love or tough love that I witnessed informed me as a little girl who wasn’t really different in many ways from Megan.”
Therefore, Laura’s journey through grief punctuated by Megan is symbolic of larger cultural-political traumas. It all sounds like déjà vu COVID era where every time humanity thinks it has finally overcome pandemic only for it to come back bigger though our minds are prepared for sadness due to new strains (or reincarnations). In Riseborough’s words to Deadline: “We’re all so separated in so many ways but then we’re more connected than ever in a way because of this weird time we are in.” This echoes the similarities between the traumas experienced in Here Before and the suffering and grieving that everyone has been going through.
Regrettably, the film does not make much use of reincarnation as an allegorical substance (and even the narrative threads), which makes it feel like a huge opportunity wasted. Maybe Gregg did not want to turn her movie into a gimmick or have it tagged as “that resurrected dead kid” movie; such a choice is understandable, but what is missing in the movie is a lot of thinking and detail about this belief (as well as how it could be used metaphorically). Instead, what would have been a fascinating exposition of faith that mirrors conflict and the human need for optimism was reduced to serve as an ordinary plot device by focusing on the protagonist’s posttraumatic stress disorder over the loss of her daughter. Just when the content seems to be introduced, however, the film abruptly changes direction and heads toward its otherwise awesome denouement. Nowadays we are witnessing too many movies with excessive length where films about Batman or Zack Snyder’s Justice League among other superhero movies have four-hour cuts; despite these facts Here Before looks too short at just an hour and twenty minutes.
But if anything had to be dropped from this film then surely it should be its last minute which flounders all over itself and leaves us feeling nothing after so much intensity in the prior twenty minutes. The movie finishes with an absolutely incredible scene that can literally keep you on the edge of your seat before switching to some kind of (thankfully) brief and tranquil ending that removes everything dramatic about it. Hopefully, this is a flashback or some similar artistic device; because if this were intended as one step in linear narrative progression then such a decision would be utterly counterintuitive.
However, these are minor quibbles about an otherwise great film. Amongst many characters she has played throughout her career Andre Riseborough has shown the capability of being able to become any person almost through reincarnating herself into another character; still here she represents one of her most sympathetic, well-developed, and complex roles. It is a powerful performance that makes an already brilliant small movie more intense and hopefully with its actress it will get the recognition that it deserves too.
Watch free movies on Fmovies
