Review: Bring Her Back

Directors:  Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

Stars:  Billy Barratt, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally Hawkins

First (select) UK audiences are treated to David Cronenberg studiously autopsying his own grief in his recently released The Shrouds, now Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou take a recklessly stabbing kitchen knife to the topic. Their follow-up to word-of-mouth hit Talk to Me operates in similar modes to their debut, dialing up steadily until things become grimly ferocious. When they’re firing on all cylinders, it’s hard to feel anything but backed into a corner. It may not be as nuanced as the Canadian master’s inquisition of personal loss, but the bracing effect of their full-force approach is impressive in it’s own ways. At times, Bring Her Back calls to mind the gory assaults of turn-of-the-century New French Extremists. Around here, that’s complimentary.

17-year-old Andy (a phenomenal Billy Barratt) and his blind step-sister Piper (Sora Wong; also great) are orphaned when their father (Stephen Phillips) collapses in the shower. Kindly counsellor Laura (Sally Hawkins) is selected to foster Piper. Protective of his sister, the ‘troublesome’ Andy muscles his way into Laura’s home, too. He’s just a few months from being old enough to apply to be Piper’s legal guardian. In his eyes, their stay at kooky Laura’s rustic cottage isn’t going to be a long one.

As much as Andy and Piper bring their own baggage, Laura’s household has plenty of it’s own. Her own daughter Cathy – blind like Piper – seems to have drowned in the swimming pool in the back yard, an event which has understandably marked Laura deeply. What’s more, there’s another child living under the roof; mute and sinister Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) whom Andy succinctly describes as a “fucking weirdo” in a text. Something’s definitely ‘off’, and its not long before Andy and Piper come to feel like Hansel and Gretel, lured into a witch’s house (Laura’s property is surrounded by a magic circle). The oven is most certainly on…

The brothers Philippou take their time turning up the heat, but Bring Her Back is cooking long before they fully tip their hand. This is in large part thanks to the stellar cast. Hawkins is bankable regardless, but its the younger contingent who really sell this journey through winding corridors to the messy and painful third act onslaught. As intimated above, Barratt is a genuine revelation. His Andy is a tempest of naked emotions seething in a teenage body, each vying for supremacy, devoted to his sister and terrified by his recent close encounter with death. As striking is young Wren Phillips. Granted, the effectiveness of the younger kid’s menace is often amplified by the tenacious special make-up effects department, but the boy’s presence is truly unsettling. I hope he had a blast filming this.

The Philippou’s aren’t shy about their visual metaphors. A recurring motif of circles underscores the cycles of grief and abuse that underpin this story, which darkens quickly as we learn more about Andy and Piper’s father, and about the lengths Laura is prepared to go to in order to psychologically quell Andy’s evident threat to her plans. For Laura, it seems, there is comfort to be conjured in repetition. The circle is a powerful tool for her, and she uses it to bind those within her grasp. As written and performed, however, she is not an outright horror. Rather, she’s a desperate wretch who has gotten her claws into something more powerful than she can imagine.

As with Talk to Me, there’s an important, seemingly-innocuous object at the heart of this story. Where previously we were at the mercy of a mummified hand with no fixed history, here it’s a degraded videotape that has provided Laura a chance portal into a terrifying world of possibilities. That the full history and happenstance behind the tape is left ill-defined only adds to its sinister power. A VHS player hasn’t been this deadly since Hideo Nakata’s Ring. There’s also something here about the perils of learning through technology; a lack of discipline that chimes with our present paranoias around AI shortcutting.

Credit to the filmmakers for disposing – as much as is reasonable – with exposition to explain their horrors. Rather they allow character discoveries to infer a deliciously incomplete picture. When Laura does finally vocalise it, she’s confirming our suspicions rather than giving us the answer.

It’s possible that the Philippous are a little too good at escalating their work. When it comes, the third act of the picture is extended, relentless and particularly cruel. It all fits together neatly, but one swerve particularly jars; a major adjustment that there’s little time to process. In close proximity is a tonally uncouth comedic montage that is so emotionally distant from everything else that it creates a whiplash effect. It’s bold storytelling, but, as with Talk to Me, there’s a sense that the Philippous are slightly heartless about the emotional ties they’ve spent commendable time creating.

So the violence and suffering can become slightly numbing, but one might argue that here that’s absolutely the point. That it all funnels into a question of how far one will go for the sake of a loved one. How much do we give away for the sake of a memory, be it cherished or haunting? As filmmakers the Philippous are focused and electric, creating horror stories adjacent to popular vibes, but powered by their own irrepressible originality. They’re two for two now.