‘Bring Her Back’ Movie Review: Philippou Twins Conjure Up Another Effective, Even Grimmer Horror Film
Photo from A24
From Jeremy Kibler
Australian horror films always seem to hit a little harder than those released inside the Hollywood studio system. Fraternal co-directors Michael and Danny Philippou reproved that objective fact with just their feature debut, 2023’s effectively unsettling and unexpectedly moving Talk to Me. If that film didn’t already cement them as exciting genre filmmakers on the rise, Bring Her Back seals the deal as their diabolical follow-up. It’s disturbing, ballsy, and pitch-black, but there’s also a undeniable pathos underneath all of the horrific stuff.
Besides being topped off with creepy occult tapes involving possession, Bring Her Back begins more as a drama about loss. Each character has experienced a tragic loss, and that’s how this foster-family cautionary tale goes in the screenplay by Danny Philippou and Talk to Me co-writer Bill Hinzman. After the untimely death of their father in the shower, 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his visually impaired sister Piper (Sora Wong) are put into the foster care system. Before Andy can become Piper’s legal guardian, they are both taken in by Laura (Sally Hawkins), an eccentric, good-spirited child-care counselor. Laura has lost her daughter Cathy in a drowning accident, but she has another child in her care: the mute, catatonic, and very unusual Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). Laura is clearly working through her grief—and she probably doesn’t want Andy there—and something is very much off about Oliver.
Bring Her Back might appear as yet another horror film about grief, but a sinister long game unfolds (not unlike in Ari Aster’s Hereditary) that proves grief and longing will make us do unspeakable things. In the unforgiving but nevertheless humane hands of the Philippous, this is a different beast than Talk to Me, which started as a thrill and became darker and more substantially emotional. This time, the filmmakers lull us in a bit more until all hope and security turn false and morph into a grim, dread-soaked rainstorm. Several brutal moments actually shock, making everyone with a human face wince. In one of those unshakable moments, let’s just say…cantaloupe!
As the Philippous were able to bring something out of Sophie Wilde in their debut, they manage to get naturalistic performances out of Billy Barratt and Sora Wong who handle such emotionally difficult material with aplomb. These two kids may not actually be blood, but Andy and Piper are very much brother and sister who will do anything for one another (they even have a cute shorthand with the word “grapefruit”). What young Jonah Wren Phillips is called upon to do physically as Ollie (the literal poster child of the film) is absolutely chilling but then also heartbreaking.
Then there’s Sally Hawkins, who has played quirky and has been pure radiance before, but never has she played someone like Laura (not even the coked-up-out-of-her-mind Slasher in Layer Cake). Full of loopy energy on the outside but extremely calculated, Laura is capable of a lot. In turn, Hawkins is magnificent here; it’s an unpredictable, alarming, layered performance that never feels one-note or cartoonish, much like Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Misery.
Bring Her Back is not some sensational horror-show, although it does have its knockout gross-outs. The human condition is placed at the film’s core, and Michael and Danny Philippou just happen to know how to weaponize it. The wringer that both Andy and Piper go through is quite cruel, and it narrowly avoids child-in-peril tropes by being on these kids’ sides all the way. The lengths that Laura goes to are insanely evil but devastating, as we see the warped world she’s created in her mind out of grief. As increasingly bleak as it all is, Bring Her Back restores hope in alternative ways, even if normalcy can’t be brought back. Nobody is left the same, and you won’t be the same afterward, either.
Rating: 4/5
Bring Her Back is currently in theaters.
