New neighbors can be a source of great anxiety. Maybe they’ll be extremely kind and friendly, coming over to introduce themselves and strike up a friendship that lasts years. Perhaps they’ll be quiet and you won’t even know they’re there. But they could be absolute menaces, loudly causing disturbances all night long and creating tension that makes you uncomfortable in your own home. What if, though, their daughter is the reincarnation of your tragically deceased child?
That’s the dilemma plaguing Laura (Andrea Riseborough) in Here Before, the feature debut of writer-director Stacey Gregg. While she will forever mourn the tragic loss of her young daughter, Laura has managed to create a daily routine with her husband (Jonjo O’Neill) and son (Jesse Frazer-Filler), moving through life in the wake of unimaginable loss. When Megan (Niamh Dornan) moves in next door with her parents (Eileen O’Higgins and Martin McCann), though, Laura feels a pull she can’t quite explain.
Initially, to both viewers and Megan’s parents, this seems harmless. Sure, it’s a little odd that she’s giving Megan rides home from school and inviting her over for dinner, but she’s just being a friendly neighbor, right? But slowly Megan starts expressing mannerisms “à la Laura’s daughter and shares details there’s no way she could know. She’s been to all of the places Laura’s daughter went to, despite having just moved there. How is this possible? Laura becomes convinced that something supernatural, something terrifying and yet beautiful, is happening here.
Here Before trades on tropes we’ve seen plenty times before, and naturally from the premise alone it’s playing in the “it’s all about grief / trauma!” territory we’ve become inundated with in recent years. Yet Gregg finds small ways to let her film stand out. For one, Laura is aware early on that what she’s questioning is, quite frankly, nuts. As she tells her husband about her belief, she knows that what she’s talking about doesn’t make any rational sense, but the signs all point to this being the only answer—and surely she wants to believe it’s true.
Alongside our protagonist’s self-awareness, the dynamic we see between Laura and Megan’s parents has a refreshing amount of dimensionality uncommon to films of this nature. While the couple begins feeling uneasy with the amount of time Laura and Megan spend together, there’s also a suburban familiarity with one another that allows things to slowly push too far. Even as Laura clearly begins crossing the line are the couple understanding about the pain Laura has endured from the loss of her child, and they try everything they can to be cordial and polite while asserting that Laura needs to keep distance.
These touches make for a more nuanced picture than you may expect. Here Before lands in the realm of character drama more than horror shockfest. To that end its greatest asset is unquestionably its leading lady, Riseborough. Rivaled only by Rebecca Hall in terms of actresses who are routinely going there with these complex, psychologically tormented characters, Riseborough remains a star who deserves far more attention than she tends to receive; here’s yet another example of her operating on an extremely high level. She carries Here Before through what could, in the hands of a less-committed lead, be a hokey premise, bringing humanity at every step and making you feel the heartache that could draw Laura to these conclusions and this desperate obsession.
That nuance gets lost in the film’s final stretch as it descends into a series of “gotcha” moments which Gregg uses to try wrapping everything up in a nice narrative bow. It’s tough to see how the film could have ended by going in another direction unless it committed fully to being something other than what it is. All the same it’s disappointing to see it take the course of shocking plot reveals. What makes Here Before so much finer than its initial premise is the soul Gregg and Riseborough lend.
Here Before releases in theaters on February 11th and on VOD February 15th.