Directors – Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou, Screenplay – Bill Hinzman & Danny Philippou, Producers – Kristina Ceyton & Samantha Jennings, Photography – Aaron McLisky, Music – Cornel Wilczek, Visual Effects Supervisor – Francesco Cadoni, Visual Effects – This is Not a Cult, Special Effects Supervisor – Max Hughes, Prosthetics Design – Scarecrew Studios (Supervisor – Larry Van Duynhoven), Makeup Effects – Make-Up Effects Group (Supervisors – Paul Katte & Nick Nicolaou), Production Design – Vanessa Cerne. Production Company – Causeway Films/Blue Bear Productions.
Cast
Billy Barratt (Andy), Sally Hawkins (Laura), Sora Wong (Piper), Jonah Wren Phillips (Oliver), Sally-Anne Upton (Wendy), Stephen Phillips (Phil), Mischa Heywood (Cathy)
Plot
Andy takes care of his sight-impaired younger sister Piper. They return home to find their father dead in the shower. Subsequently, both are to be placed in foster care and separated. Andy pleads with the social worker that they be allowed to stay together so that he can look after Piper. It is agreed that they are placed with Laura, a former social worker, although she has some caution about Andy’s history as a problem child. Upon moving in, Andy finds Laura and her elective mute son Oliver to be odd. Things about the house become increasingly stranger with Oliver who will try to eat almost anything, while Laura appears to be gaslighting Andy to make him appear more violent. As it becomes evident, Laura is attempting to conduct a ritual that will resurrect her daughter Olivia, who was drowned.
Danny and Michael Philippou are twin brothers from Australia who first emerged through the Racka Racka horror short comedy videos on their YouTube channel. The brothers had international success with their debut horror film Talk to Me (2022), which gained very good word of mouth. Bring Her Back was their second feature film and gained more good word of mouth.
My initial mistake going into Bring Her Back was expecting more of the same uncanny way out jumps that there was in Talk to Me, whereas what we have is a far more character driven film. Not to say that the Philippou Brothers don’t produce way out jumps but the film is structured in a way that the character development is essential and it takes some time before things slide over into the uncanny and grotesque.
The brothers give you a film where your sympathies are with Billy Barratt, the troubled kid who is really trying for his sister, the sight-impaired Sora Wong, and doing his best despite everything in life seemingly set against him. Both kids give surprisingly strong performances here. Without much introduction, the two of them are then placed into the care of Sally Hawkins, who gives a fantastically good performance as the former social worker who seems overly friendly and kooky in a way that is unnerving, along with Jonah Wren Phillips as her son who has a piercingly intense glare where you just know that he is going to turn out to grow up a serial killer.
Brother Billy Barratt with sister Sora WongSally Hawkins and son Jonah Wren Phillips
Rather than the overt jumpshocks of Talk to Me, what Bring Her Back resembles is something of the sinister foster parents of a film like The Glass House (2001), albeit with occult overtones. Things slowly move over into the sinister with the strange games that Sally Hawkins seems to be up to, making it seem as though Billy Barratt is wetting the bed and acting violently. And then come quite disturbing moments like where Jonah Wren Phillips starts biting into a chef’s knife and then later the kitchen bench, seemingly unconcerned that he is shattering his teeth. It all mounts to quite a reasonable and intensive work out by the end.
During these scenes, the Philippou Brothers are playing a guessing game with us as to what is going on – as to what Sally Hawkins is trying to do and crucially what has happened to Jonah Wren Phillips. Even at the end, it is not always clear what is going on. [PLOT SPOILERS] Sally is trying to conduct some kind of resurrection ritual that would have had her dead daughter reincarnated in Sora Wong’s body. How exactly Jonah Wren fits into this is not clear – she appears to have kidnapped a boy and at one point says that he is inhabited by an angel and this has made him want to devour everything, eventually including the dead daughter’s corpse. How feeding him a lock of the dead father’s hair is part of this is also not clear.
