Film Review: Here Before is a powerful meditation on grief and hope

Here Before is a 2021 British psychological thriller film written and directed by Stacey Gregg in her feature directorial debut. It stars Andrea Riseborough, Jonjo O'Neill, Martin McCann, and Eileen O'Higgins 

★★★★☆

Reincarnation isn’t necessarily a scary prospect, but Here Before (15A) flirts with horror movie conventions as it establishes the relationship between Laura (Andrea Riseborough) and her new young neighbour, Megan (Niamh Dornan).

Initially charmed by Megan’s offbeat personality when her family move in next door in a quiet suburban estate in Northern Ireland, Laura is shocked when Megan begins alluding to intimate details she couldn’t possibly know about Josie, Laura’s daughter, who died some years previously. As the relationship between Laura and Megan grows more intense, the girl’s parents Marie (Eileen O’Higgins) and Chris (Martin McCann) step in to keep them apart, while Laura’s husband, Brendan (Jonjo O’Neill), despairs of her ever recovering from the devastation of Josie’s death.

But what if Laura is right? What if Megan really was here before?

Written and directed by Stacey Gregg, Here Before can be considered a horror flick, but only if we agree that the most terrifying monsters we will ever encounter are found our own minds. Laura, although functional, seems to exist in a perpetual fog of despair, and Stacey Gregg weaves around her main character a world chock-a-block with pathetic fallacy: the housing estate is grey and dreary, its gardens full of rotting leaves, and the rain, even by Northern Ireland’s impressive standards, is incessant.

Is it any surprise that Laura should grasp at the slim possibility that her dead daughter has returned, even if she can’t quite bring herself to believe in her own delusion?

Andrea Riseborough and Niamh Dornan are both excellent here, individually and together, as Stacey Gregg’s debut feature, although unnecessarily melodramatic in the final act, offers a powerful and affecting meditation on grief and hope.

(cinema release)