The Philippou Brothers’ sophomore feature proves they’re a horror force to be reckoned with
Michael and Danny Philippou gave the Horror genre a much-needed shot in the arm with their breakout festival debut Talk To Me, which infused possession thrillers with an addictive kinetic energy honed during their formative years as successful stunt YouTubers. With such a signature manic look and irreverent tone, it’d be easy and expected to tackle a follow-up feature by repeating the same stylish flair, applied to similar beats. Hell, A24’s first sequel, Talk 2 Me, was announced weeks after the first film’s wild box office weekend.
I’m excited to report that the Philippous’ new film, Bring Her Back, is very, very much not another Talk to Me. While the film retains the duo’s macabre sense of humor, Bring Her Back replaces their debut’s rapid-fire energy with a simmering, sinister patience. It’s restrained by design in terms of location, characters, and tone. That is, until the well-matured character dynamics and taut atmosphere of dread break into some of the most unexpectedly disturbing and gut-wrenching sequences out there. It’s a rewarding and unrelentingly bleak exercise in darkness–and cements the Philippous as fiendishly inventive horror auteurs with ironclad grips on their audience.
After the death of their sole remaining parent, troubled teen Andy (Billy Barratt) and his legally blind little sister Piper (Sora Wong) risk splitting up in the Australian foster care system due to Andy’s brief yet impactful history of violence. Their savior, former foster counselor Laura (Sally Hawkins) gives them a new home where they can remain together until Andy turns 18 and becomes Piper’s guardian. Laura, still grieving the loss of her similarly blind daughter, is more than eager to give Piper the care she needs…even if it means going out of her depth by taking in another not-quite-child. But Andy and Piper aren’t alone–they also share the home with Laura’s remaining child, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), rendered mute by his sister’s death.
As Piper slowly lets their guard down around her new foster mother, it slowly dawns on Andy that there’s more insidious motivations behind Laura’s gentle generosity–ones that threaten to upend his relationship between the last family member he has left.
Part of what makes Bring Her Back such a compelling watch is how each of the film’s central characters commit to their individual roles, even as the film increasingly weaponizes their prickly and personal dynamics between one another. Barratt and Wong have a winning chemistry with one another, and as Andy is forced to swallow much of what’s happening to him in order to shield Piper from what’s going on, the crux of of Barratt’s role is to convey to audiences the pain and terror he faces even as he tries to remain cheerful to Piper or stoic to people like Laura or other social workers. It’s a challenge Barratt more than lives up to, providing Bring Her Back with nerve-shredding anxiety as we stress out so much about the fate of these little kids. In her own debut role, Wong refuses to let a character like Piper become a prop or danger-magnet due to her disability, exploring the world of Bring Her Back with curiosity and agency even as she begins to question her brother’s seeming selflessness towards her. Phillips’ non-verbal role as Oliver is easily among Milly Shapiro in Hereditary or Harvey Scrimshaw in The Witch as part of A24’s growing pantheon of creepy Horror kids–and like those roles, Ollie reveals himself to be a character with plenty of meat for an actor to chew on outside of silent menace.
But the hands-down star of the film is Sally Hawkins as Laura, making her (to my knowledge) first turn in a straight-up horror film. Hawkins sinks her teeth into this role, inhabiting Laura with a frayed yet optimistic resilience that takes on increasingly dark tones as more becomes clear. As she encourages Andy and Piper to open up to her, Laura’s emotional honesty allows us to completely understand her grief over losing her child–and, over time, how it walls her off from anything else worth empathizing with. As Bring Her Back progresses, we realize just how adept Laura is at using her gentleness like the lantern on a deep-sea angler fish, and how Hawkins is at manipulating where audiences place their trust in a film like this.
The resulting atmosphere, cultivated by the Philippous to sickening perfection, is one of intense, brooding stillness crackling with an air of pervasive menace. If the ghosts of Talk to Me could be defined by their desire to lash out and make public displays of gruesome sensation, the crippling stillness of Bring Her Back suggests that such visible horror is possible at any minute, if not for how much the characters need to keep such impulses at bay. As mentioned in the film’s post-screening Q&A, the Philippous drew major inspiration from Bette Davis films like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? as far as creating palpable character-driven tension; I couldn’t help but draw my own comparisons to other 60s’ era paranoid thrillers like Bunny Lake is Missing, particularly in how the film makes such a concentrated effort to show just how the leads aren’t crazy, but are instead subject to a sanity-straining mousetrap to the unwitting ignorance of those they care about most. Audiences are squirming in their seats over just what Andy and Laura will do to protect those they care about even before the Philippou’s unabashed love for no-CGI practical effects finally barrels into the fray.
One wouldn’t expect the film’s stillness to lend itself to the same visceral tactility that made Talk to Me such a memorable first film–but it’s still a very sensory film, as Piper navigates Laura’s multi-textured house, or Andy endures physical and mental strains to uncover the truth behind Laura’s motivations amidst torrential rainstorms or sprawling, lush forests. Word of warning, this love for sensation in all its forms is all the more prevalent in two absolutely sickening sequences that brought cheers, gasps, and near-walkouts in our screening. This might not be the best film to eat before (or even after) watching.
What remains the most effective aspect of Bring Her Back, though, is how much the Philippous have matured as storytellers between their already-impressive debut and this film. Without going into spoilers, so much of what would be the interesting parts of a story like Bring Her Back’s has seemingly already happened before frame one; there’s a tome’s worth of lore creeping at the edges of the frame, whether it’s the previous dynamics of Andy and Piper’s family, or the larger machinations of what Laura may or may not be up to. However, the Philippous ensure Bring Her Back remains constantly active, moving, and present for both its characters and their audience.
Bring Her Back is a gentle yet poisonously evil horror show, one that I’m not eager to shake anytime soon. If Talk to Me signaled the arrival of two powerful horror voices, Bring Her Back ensures they aren’t going anywhere as long as we can stomach what sights they have in store.
Bring Her Back hits theaters on May 30th courtesy of A24.
