Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan Drama

You'll never look at sheep farming the same way again after watching this. Take them downfirst-time writer-director Christopher Andrews' dark drama about two Irish farmers locked in a long, bloody turf war. Unrelentingly dark, with more cattle blood than any film in recent memory, the closest it comes is fellow Irish director Billy O'Brien's 2005 bovine thriller, Insulation —this violent debut feature is supported more by its leads Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan than by its dark narrative.

The two convincing actors play shepherds struggling to survive in the muddy hills of western Ireland, where a long-standing feud between their families escalates into a full-blown dog fight (or perhaps a sheep fight?). The fight begins pretty much as soon as the film opens, and a problem with Take them down This is how we are thrown straight into a conflict about which we know little about the protagonists. The film not only starts like a rocket, but it makes its way, crashing, dragging and stabbing itself from one scene to the next.

A brief prologue reveals a major trauma that occurred years earlier at the hands of Michael (Abbott), who gets into a car accident with his sister and mother after the latter says she wants to divorce Michael's father, Ray (Colm Meaney). When we meet Ray a few scenes later, we can see why: bossy and thoroughly unpleasant, he spends his days stuck in a kitchen chair because of his bad knees, berating poor Michael every time he walks in the door.

This is not a pleasant house, and neither is the one just up the road, where Michael's sister, Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone), is now married to a bitter, drunken pastor named Gary (Paul Ready). Their son, Jack (Keoghan), is younger than Michael, and while the two are related, they are hardly friends. When an argument breaks out over a pair of sheep that Michael claims were stolen from his flock, the situation quickly escalates into a conflict that spirals out of control. Pocket knives, guns, multiple mutilations, a decapitation, and another car crash are all thrown into the mix, with no end in sight.

Take them down is so dark that it can be a bit of a drag to watch. But there’s enough underlying tension and adrenaline to keep you hooked for at least an hour. Andrews does a fine job directing his two stars, both of whom bring some humanity to the characters trapped in a nasty cycle of violence and revenge. Abbott immerses himself in a role that requires speaking fluent Gaelic (perfectly believable to these untrained ears) not to mention getting covered in layers of dirt and blood. Keoghan, always a fascinating artist to watch, transforms Jack into a fragile young man whose moral conscience has been worn down by so many years of poverty, isolation and toxic masculinity.

The latter seems to be the main force governing a remote corner of Ireland where, in one of the film's most gruesome sequences, dozens and dozens of sheep are illegally slaughtered so that their hind legs can be sold for cheap meat. There's something decidedly biblical about the way Andrews and cinematographer Nick Cooke (chimes of the sky) capture the massacre and other difficult scenes, setting them against the backdrop of rolling hills stretching away into infinity, with the sun setting and dipping into the clouds.

But the director ends up pushing his dark premise too far, losing credibility as his characters continue to do extremely stupid and destructive things. Aside from Caroline, who plans to leave the city for Cork and perhaps take Jack with her, the others are condemned to a miserable existence that has seemingly not changed for centuries. (According to Ray, his family's sheep have been grazing on the hills for 500 years.) These people are literally and figuratively stuck in the mud, and the sad conclusion of Take them down It seems the only way out is to get killed or somehow manage to survive.