Review: Bring Her Back

Much like their smash hit directorial debut Talk To Me, the Philippou brothers' follow-up Bring Her Back deals in horror of a semi-self-inflicted kind, where mucking around with the dead brings all sorts of torment to the living. But where Talk To Me balanced its otherworldly threats with mystery and humour, Bring Her Back commits early to an unwaveringly bleak tone. Too grim to truly be considered 'fun', exciting performances and some truly disgusting moments means Bring Her Back is still solid horror.

Siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) are teens figuring out their respective places in the world. Piper, who has low vision, relies on Andy for visual information and emotional reassurance; Andy in turn is overly protective, while still very much a child himself. When their dad dies in an accident at home, the siblings are promptly thrown into foster care. Enter foster mother Laura (Sally Hawkins), a kooky counsellor mourning the death of her similarly visually impaired daughter Cathy. Laura's house is already home to a taxidermied dog, a less taxidermied cat named "Junk Man", and another foster son, Oliver—himself traumatised by Cathy's death, now selectively mute.

The living arrangement is understood to be a solution for a few months until Andy turns 18 and can apply for custody of Piper. But Laura has other ideas and sets about undermining the siblings' relationship, subjecting Andy in particular to upsetting and bizarre abuse. Following instructions from a spooky VHS ('preserving evil ritual or spell' by now one of the old home format's primary use cases), Laura has bloody, potentially deadly plans for Piper and Ollie too. Her plan isn't exactly a secret: if anything, Bring Her Back gives away too much too early. Punctuated by occasional moments of extreme gore, the driving emotional force isn't fear of not knowing what might happen next, but the dread of knowing what will.

As well as Talk To Me, Bring Her Back evokes a grab-bag of horror classics. This is The Exorcist without any exorcists, The Ring in a world where no-one owns a VCR any more. There's surprising echoes of little-seen* German sci-fi drama The Trouble with Being Born: both feature small, mostly silent children burdened by a parent's unreasonable desire, with internal struggles beyond comprehension. But where that film builds tension through chilling ambiguity, Bring Her Back treads a more straightforward path. In The Trouble with Being Born, a backyard pool is spotless, almost clinical; Bring Her Back's comparable muddy drained shell is immediately established as a place of menace and death. Nuance be damned: this is clear as day, in-your-face evil.

This lack of depth is made more apparent by the number of loose dramatic and thematic threads. Opening text informs us that "this is not a cult", but there's never anything particularly cultish going on; a seemingly supernatural scare isn't revisited; Ollie's condition manifests as pica in several shocking and violent scenes, but his hunger is shown mainly as a threat to others (and himself) and is an artistic missed opportunity. Repeating circle imagery is a simple and unimaginative motif. While the end result is still cohesive, too many elements are left under-explored or unexplained.

Bring Her Back's uneven mix of obscured and obvious follows through to its soundtrack. There's much needed humour in the blasts of local millenialcore pop bangers and gen-X dad rock, but Cornel Wilczek's score occasionally distracts, low droning strings overplaying already tense moments.

The film is at its best when it gets out of its own way and gives its performances space. Billy Barratt is compelling as Andy, a conflicted, vulnerable teen trying his best to step up into adulthood. Newcomer Sora Wong is natural and charming as Piper, while Jonah Wren Phillips (previously seen in song-turned-film How To Make Gravy) is acceptably creepy as the unpredictable, tormented Ollie. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sally Hawkins is a standout, finding a mix of chaotic evil and grounded drama that anchors the rest of the film. Laura is a perfect villain—unstable yet calculating, her weaponised fragility makes her delightfully hateable—yet Hawkins still finds moments for genuine tenderness and empathy.

These strong performances are what gets Bring Her Back over the line as it rushes to its blood-soaked, waterlogged finale. Piper begins to fight for independence as the violence around her escalates, but the film's focus on her becomes muddled. Though the cinematography often evokes Piper's sight through out-of-focus movement, the conclusion mostly drops this perspective. The final shot is heartbreaking, but not illuminating or even satisfying. Bring Her Back is horror at its most depressing, a dramatic downer that's all sickening surface.

*Originally slated for MIFF's 2020 online-only festival, The Trouble with Being Born was pulled after an article in The Age implied it would promote child sexual abuse, quoting two forensic psychologists—neither of whom having watched the entire film, with one not watching it at all. It later had an Australian premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival.