User Reviews

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.

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.

The acting, the mood, the cinematography... is superb. There is not much going on to be honest, but I actually loved the first 2/3 because the small details were clever, and tensions felt very real. I don't mind a slow burn when it's so well executed. For me, the" twist" ending was the let down. The movie is rather slow, and it way too much to unpack in the last 15 minutes, felt rushed and hard to swallow. The more I think about the ending, the more it really doesn't make much sense, and contrasts a lot with the rest of the movie that feels mature and believable. Still, reminds me a bit of "Birth" with Nicole Kidman... Not a great movie, but it kind of sticks with you.

Great to see good films being made in Northern Ireland these days. Days of the troubles are gone.

Superb acting and different kinda story. I enjoyed it.

The ending is rushed, needed more room to unravel and breath.

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.

When a couple and their young daughter move in next door, Andrea Risborough, whose own daughter died years before, starts taking an interest in the girl and begins to believe that she may actually be her daughter.

Fascinating drama / thriller centred around motherhood and the loss of child. What holds this together do well is that you're never entirely sure where this is going. Is she just losing it following the loss of her daughter or is there something supernatural going on and why is the girl seemingly equally interested in Risborough? That it gets through all this mystery and comes up with a solid, convincing conclusion is to its great credit. Everyone in it acts very well, but of course Risborough is top of the pops here and gives a delivers a great turn, carefully avoiding endless, over the top melodrama. Definitely worth catching.

I generally love slow, tension-ratcheting thrillers. This is too slow. And boring. And I lost interest and then came back and still nothing had happened.

This movie is 77 minutes long, and for me those 77 minutes were drawn out perfectly, with enough scene setting, time for picking up some subtle clues as to what might be going on before the pennies start dropping as it moves to the conclusion.

It's a heartbreaking tale of a mother who is grieving their child, the effect it has on the family, and how external forces cause the ripples in that grief to become all consuming.

It's not the fast and the furious, it's not an action movie, it's not a horror film. I'm confused by some of the reviews on here although when you look at what the reviewers have also watched you wonder how this film even made it to their watch list.

I like it when I get to the end of a film and think "I'm glad I watched that". This was one of those.

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!

I definitely don't get the low ratings. Soundtrack was awesome and so was the whole atmosphere of the movie. Haunting, slow, and winding. It makes sense why she let Megan go over to theirs for dinner alone by the end. And it was just a mess. I felt so bad for Laura by the end and it definitely tugged out some emotion. So much could have been avoided if the lies had just ended but that's the way things go in real life too I suppose. I kind of wish there was more though. Especially at the end because I really want to konw what's happening in that last minute or so of film. All in all a solid movie that I'm glad I sat down and watched.

Some movies are better than others are getting our attention, or do more. This one came and went in 2021 with little fanfare; I've come across it now by chance. This is unfortunate, as I think many such titles deserve more viewership and recognition than they get, and I'd count this among them. It won't appeal to everyone, of course; 'Here before' maintains a subdued tone across its 80 minutes that lends to a sense of minimal plot progression. That's half right, as this is very much a character-driven drama tightly centered on protagonist Laura, and furthermore, a psychological drama. The movie never achieves any especial height of storytelling height or emotional output, but deliberately so, instead aiming for and succeeding at inculcating quiet, haunted airs. This is reflected in various aspects, not least in Adam Janota Bzowski's somber, slightly discordant score, and those instances of its emphatic absence. Most noteworthy of all may be Andrea Riseborough's performance in the lead role, distinctly pained and fraught with complicated emotions - it's a complex role, and she navigates it with all the nuanced skill we know she possesses. This is a pleasure to watch for her alone.

Tension and mystery grow in kind as the narrative progresses, and while the feature maintains a broadly hushed sensibility, it gradually becomes more outright chilling in some ways as events come to a head. My commendations to filmmaker Stacey Gregg; there's a fierce intelligence to her direction and writing that bit by bit makes 'Here before' softly captivating, even as it takes its good time to come together. I don't think this is altogether perfect; I can't quite place my finger on the issue, but it feels like the connective threads are only just keeping the narrative stitched together, like it's at risk of losing cohesion with one false move. Something just doesn't entirely sit right with me - though, seeing as I can't particularly identify what, I can hardly hold it against Gregg, yeah? And in all other ways this is solid - Brian Philip Davis' editing, Chloë Thomson's cinematography, and so on; the rest of the cast is swell, too. By all means, though, it's Riseborough and Gregg's contributions that do the most to make this what it is, and they are to be congratulated.

I don't think it's flawless, nor 100% essential. I'm pleased at how well made it is, though, and ultimately engrossing. Clocking in at such a relatively small runtime, this is most recommendable to fans of those involved or of psychological thrillers, but even for general audiences it will surely hold some sway. Don't feel like you need to go out of your way for it, but if you have the chance to watch 'Here before,' this is well worth one's time.

If you read the synopsis, you know what this is about. There is a twist here but i didn't like it, it came out of nowhere. Therefore, i didn't like the ending.

Up until the twist, it's watchable but still slow & dragging. And for a 83 minutes movie, this doesn't look good.

It is not a bad movie, the actors are good, and maybe some people will like the ending. If you are in the mood for a slow mystery/drama (With emphasis on "drama"), maybe you will like it more than me.

Maybe this is a decent movie, I don't know.

What I do know is that I tried watching it on Amazon Prime and the sound was very badly muffled, making it impossible for me to make it what was being said.

On top of that, there were no subtitles, or Captioning available.

I do have a hearing impairment, but there are still many things I can watch, without subtitles. Those where the sound is poorly produced, are still watchable, with subtitles.

For a film made as recently as 2022, I would expect to have Captioning available.

The best solution would be to make clearer sound, for customers watching on TV, or home media - but failing that, provide subtitles.

It doesn't seem like a very high expectation, with modern technology, and film-making.

I would call it the bare minimum.

There must be thousands, if not millions of viewers, like me, who have to switch off. Very foolish of film makers, and media outlets, to ignore the deaf and hard of hearing, in this way.

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.

Here Before: A young family move in next door to a somewhat older settled couple. The new family have a young daughter Megan (Niamh Doran) who reminds next doors Laura (Andrea Riseborough) of her deceased daughter Josie. Megan remembers events from Josie's past, at first mundane things but it moves on to specific strange memories. Megan recalls being in the graveyard, items in the playground which were removed years before. Laura's husband Brendan (Jonjo O'Neill) ties to get her to accept that Megan is not Josie, he still grieves over the loss but handles it better than Laura. Laura's obsession grows causing Megan's mother Marie (Eileen O'Higgins) to tell her to stay away from Megan. Megan however now claims that she is Josie. This would be a case of Dybbuk rather reincarnation as Megan is the age that Josie would be now. A sense of apprehension builds as the film unfolds, st on the semi-rural outskirts of Belfast the houses back on to a hill which is mist and rain covered much of the time. Indeed the rain is constant in this film adding to the bleak mood. The sound mixing is excellent as you hear trees creak over foreboding music adding to the eeriness of scenes. The intensity of Andrea Riseborough's portrayal of Laura is central to the narrative with great performances from Naimh Dornan and Lewis McAskie as Laura's son Tadgh who clashes with Megan. Maybe the script or direction wobbles a little with the denouement but this is an unsettling psychological thriller. Written and Directed by Stacey Gregg in her directorial debut. 8/10.

I like Andrea Riseborough she is a much underrated actress, but I suspect that's because she does not know how to choose great films that suit her.

This film is definitely not a great film. It's not even a good film. In fact it's a pretty poor film on many levels.

The filming is poor with too much contrast and not enough light. It actually makes you feel miserable.

The dialogue is patchy and lacking any real interest, and more times than I cared to count you can't actually hear what's being said.

The score was I thought entirely appropriate for a deep, meaningful, dark sci fi movie. It does not work at all on this film.

The pace is tragically slow. There are scenes that are drawn out and I can't for the life of me see why. They don't even add value to the film. It's a long, drawn out dreary story that ends in a sudden anti-climax.

All in all there's little to recommend with this film except if you are genuinely interested in seeing the mechanics of a bad film and how not to do it, watch this, it's a perfect example of how not to make films.

I guess the writer-director wanted to tread a well worn path for the majority of this film and then go off road with a twist at the very end. So the majority of the film is very much "I've seen this sort of thing many times before" and, unfortunately, the twist is disappointing and the film ends with a whimper. So the best laid plans of the writer-director come to naught.

While Laura (played by Andrea Riseborough) is believable as a mother who wonders whether she is losing her mind, she seems too in control of her emotions, when she should be lost in her reawakened grief.

Overall, this felt very plot-driven, rather than character-driven. And since the twist was disappointing, this film can't be recommended.

Let's just say I have insomnia and it put me to sleep.

Bad storyline. Bad acting. Bad music.

Don't waste your time. Sadly, I couldn't give it a zero.

A heartwarming story of broken hearts and fateful twists. Good acting and soothing visuals. Unique plot and an interesting conclusion. Great realistic performance by the cast.

Twist ending worth to score higher from my perspective. When the story end in a surprising way, make no matter how boring the beginning is makes me feel worth it. Of course it need to make sense.

The good: wanna fall asleep? Bingo!

The bad: this movies' story is almost similar to that of "The Lost Daugther" with Olivia Colman. And although "The Lost Daughter" is not brilliant, "The Lost Daughter" is a lot (A LOT) better than this amateurish, tedious movie, with only C-listed actors starring in it, who have no charisma whatsoever.

No thrill, no drama, no suspense. Nothing. It's dribble...