When Brian O’Hara (Paul Mescal) returns to his hometown early in God’s Creatures, he’s greeted as if he’s been lost at sea, perhaps presumed dead. That’s not the case; from the sound of it, he’s been bumming around Australia in a ramshackle attempt to make something, anything, of himself, clearly nursing some long-held familial grudges. Still, it’s easy to see why his mother Aileen (Emily Watson) treats him like a lonely sailor, miraculously rescued from shipwreck: She lives in a fishing village off the coast of Ireland, where, from a certain direction, the outside world just looks like the vast, unknowable ocean.
It also doesn’t necessarily look like the sort of place where a guy like Brian would be returning in triumph, but Aileen, so glad to have her son back within reach, ignores this. And why wouldn’t she? She’s just been to a local funeral for a friend’s son, around Brian’s age, and when Brian returns home promising to restart the family’s oyster-fishing business, it feels like a hopeful renewal in the face of looming death. Brian’s sister Erin (Toni O’Rourke) and his father Con (Declan Conlon), however, aren’t quite as enthusiastic about his prodigal-son peacocking, and when Erin’s childhood friend (and Aileen’s fish-packing plant coworker) Sarah (Aisling Franciosi) accuses Brian of a major crime, family and community tensions rise. It’s easy to imagine this material fueling a play of schematic seriousness, one that—like this movie—avoids actually depicting what Sarah is accusing Brian of doing, in favor of a sociological examination of the aftermath.
That’s part of God’s Creatures, but the filmmaking has such formal rigor that there’s no mistaking it for theater. Directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer previously made the beguiling drama The Fits, which Holmer directed and Davis edited, from Davis’s story. Here, they share the directing credit, working with Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, whose experiences in an Irish fishing village, informed the story, which screenwriter Shane Crowley fleshed out into a full feature. God’s Creatures doesn’t have quite the same enchanting, unnerving mystery of The Fits, where a girls’ dance troupe begins to suffer unexplained seizures. The hardscrabble working-class details here inevitably feel a bit more familiar, whether from American kitchen-sink indies or Irish plays. But befitting their previous, dance-heavy collaboration, Davis and Holmer have a knack for tracing their characters’ movements, whether through wide, overhead shots of the packing-plant floor, or observing the bustle of activity around a still, grieving woman. The sound design, catching snatches of local conversation amidst a discomfiting musical score, contributes to a foreboding atmosphere.