Identical twins Danny and Michael Philippou started their filmmaking careers creating wrestling videos in their Adelaide, Australia, backyard when they were 11 years old. The Philippous’ horror-comedy shorts on their RackaRacka YouTube channel racked up a billion views before the duo made their feature debut with Talk to Me in 2023. Talk to Me featured a great mix of fun and fright, supernatural chills and unique effects, and the duo’s newest release exceeds expectations. Like Talk to Me, Bring Her Back also features afterlife themes, but its production, writing and performances represent a full grim and gory step forward for the directing duo.
Seventeen-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger, visually impaired stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) discover their father dead in the shower. Their lives are thrown into chaos as the minors find themselves at the mercy of the state. Andy has a protective relationship with Piper and plans to apply for legal custody once he turns 18. But when their caseworker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) places the pair with their new foster mother, she has plans of her own.
Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former counselor who recently lost her own daughter, operates a foster home in the countryside. Her isolated property is quiet and comforting at first, but Andy and Piper begin to sense that something is wrong about their new living situation. Laura establishes an immediate, intense, almost obsessive interest in Piper, but has trouble remembering Andy’s name and seems to purposely cut him out of their first family selfie. Andy and Piper share Laura’s attention with Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a mute boy also living in Laura’s care. Oliver exhibits deeply disturbing behavior — communicating only through his disturbing drawings and often seeming strangely detached from reality.
The writing (Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman), casting and acting work so well together here that Bring Her Back sometimes feels like a grief-filled family drama before the next supernatural occurrence or strange discovery reminds viewers they’re treading water in the deep end of a sometimes very disturbing horror film. Sally Hawkins’ Laura is especially mercurial and menacing, lulling Piper and gaslighting Andy while slowly revealing just how far she’ll go to rebuild the loving connections she’s lost.
Andy starts to investigate the bizarre occurrences around the property, but soon begins experiencing troubling symptoms like bed-wetting and startling hallucinations. Laura’s behavior becomes unpredictable and erratic, and Oliver’s presence seems increasingly menacing. When Andy discovers secrets about Oliver’s identity, the pieces of a horrifying puzzle snap coldly into place.
The Philippous’ pacing is commendable here. Bring Her Back is a quiet film that explores solemn themes, but it steadily reveals its mysteries until the tiniest, oddest details give way to full-screen revelations of something wicked happening at the woodsy homestead. Talk to Me was serious and scary, but some of its fun was in its feel as a teen terror flick. Bring Her Back is a mature adult film subjectively and formally. Cinematographer Aaron McLisky’s lensing is saturated and brooding — it’s a perfect match for the foggy woods in the soggy countryside. Geoff Lamb edited the film alongside the directors, and their poetic cutting gives the proceedings a somnambulent, surreal sensibility.
Andy races against time to protect Piper from Laura and an occult ritual that marries unbearable grief with Satanic forces. But Bring Her Back works because for all of its demonic energies, magical circles, wicked foster parents, vulnerable orphans and spooky woods at night, it’s a movie about parents losing their children, children losing their parents, abusive homes, trauma, disability and all the other real life pains that can come from the families we’re born into, and the ones we find when the lights go out.
Bring Her Back is streaming on HBO MAX
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.