Directors Danny and Michael Philippou’s Bring Her Back (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) draws a line in the sand and dares other horror movies to cross it – or maybe that should be “draws a circle in the sand and dares them to enter it”? Either way, it Goes There in a way that isn’t easily shrugged off. The Brothers Philippou made a name for themselves a couple years ago with Talk to Me, a memorable teen horror-comedy that was a big enough hit, its makers nearly took the enormocheck and made a Street Fighter film. But they changed their minds in what I assume was a fit of inspiration, creativity, integrity and/or disregard for significant material wealth, and made a movie that made ol’ Guts of Steel here look away from the screen in fits of abhorrent repugnant nauseous repulsion. Which is to say, huzzah, because we’d have discarded Street Fighter in milliseconds, and Bring Her Back clings to us like a shroud.
The Gist: Disclosure: Bring Her Back is not a funny movie. Not at all. It tackles heavy stuff like pain and grief. But it’s also whoa-nelly gory in such a disturbing manner, the only way for me to digest it without puking is to be a flippant wiseass. Now, on with the show: We open in a grimy locale, dimly lit of course, with a woman standing in a white circle painted on the ground and a man with a distended belly approaching her. Water drips from the sky (I think it’s technically a thing called “rain” but it doesn’t quite look right here?) and there’s a noose and the folks here generally don’t seem… OK. And it’s all being documented with a video camera old enough to tell us this happened during the VHS era. Why? I think it’s an instructional video for anyone who feels the need to do stuff that’s utterly f—ed.
Not that we see the utterly f—ed stuff yet. No, the main story begins with regular, plausibly f—ed stuff, like 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind, younger half-sister Piper (Sora Wong) finding their father naked and dead on the bathroom tile. Something happened in the shower, and now he’s gone, enveloped in a steamy fog. The kids are orphans now, and since he’s a few months from being a legal adult, Andy can’t be Piper’s guardian. They’re tight. They truly care for each other. They argue to not be separated. And a foster mom agrees to look past that one incident from Andy’s past – he was only eight, so let’s not be unreasonable here – and take them both in until he’s 18. And I’m sure this foster mom is going to be JUST PERFECT and a total unimpeachable sweetheart who isn’t, you know, utterly f—ed.
Meet Laura (Sally Hawkins). I know, she looks like she adopted Paddington. How could she be utterly f—ed? Now imagine if she had and loved Paddington for years like her own child and then lost him in a tragic accident. That’s what happened, except instead of Paddington, it was her blind daughter Cathy. She drowned in the pool. And when Andy and Piper arrive at Laura’s house, the pool is empty, and even if we don’t know poop about crap, we know that empty pools just aren’t right. Especially an empty pool with a kid standing in it, apparently trying to smother Laura’s poor pet cat. That’s Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips). Pay him no mind. He’s the other foster kid. He’s mute by choice. And please don’t ask why Laura keeps him locked in his room all the time. No big whoop!
Laura greets Andy and Piper warmly and then proceeds to block Andy’s face with her own in a selfie. Piper gets Cathy’s old room, which is still full of all the dead girl’s stuff. Andy gets a storage area with a mattress on the floor. Laura looooovesssss Piper. There’s an incident where Laura snoops Andy’s phone and pisses him off. Andy seems to be wetting the bed, too. All three go to Andy and Piper’s dad’s funeral and Laura makes it weird weird weird. Might have something to do with Laura secretly snipping some of the corpse’s hair, which is a total witch move. They go home and Laura gets totally smashed drunk along with the kids and it’s really hard to tell if it’s cool or not cool – if you’re Andy or Piper. If you’re us, you know it’s not, because there’s something going on with Ollie and the shed out back and the giant white circle that goes alllllllll the wayyyyyyyyyy arounddddddddddd the house. Oh, and she seems to be watching an instructional video, because learning is a lifelong process!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Bring Her Back is close to Hereditary territory in terms of its unforgettable imagery and ability to get under your skin.
Performance Worth Watching: Noooooooo! They made Sally Hawkins evil! She’s happy-go-lucky, and Paddington and Willy Wonka’s mom, and the sweet lady who loved the fish man! As much as you’ll love Wong in the not-always-so-vulnerable-teen-girl role, the film belongs to Hawkins, who reaches new heights (depths?) of psychotrauma, at least for her career/persona.
Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized for your safety: “MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!”
Sex and Skin: Nothing about this movie is sexy. NOTHING. There’s some male nudity, though.
Our Take: The terrible irony of a movie like Bring Her Back is, it makes your eyes grow wider and wider and wider, and then it unleashes the kind of imagery that prompts you to cover them with your hands. It’s diabolical in its manipulation, really. And highly effective. The Philippous truly know what they’re doing here, playing us like a piano strung with our raw, sensitive, twingey little nerves.
The film’s most high-functioning component is its portrayal of a disturbed child, the directors feeding fresh meat to all the hungry and frequently exploited creepy-little-kid tropes of dozens upon dozens of movies. No spoilers, but it goes far beyond bizarre pencil drawings and thousand-yard stares and straight into feral-demon territory. Young Phillips really goes through it here, putrid prosthetics glued all over him, nasty contact lenses turning him into a thing possessed, and playing poor Ollie like Gollum, but more, you know, biblical in his Satanic demeanor. And the Philippous make him do things that make us hope he doesn’t watch the movie he’s in for another 10 years.
Thematically, Bring Her Back mucks about in a number of the usual traumacore grief/pain/loss fodder, albeit communicated by Hawkins with an aching rawness that’s impossible to brush aside – and almost makes Laura’s choices plausible, in a world where occult forces are real and offer Faustian bargains to desperate people of course, mu-hahahahah. Her emotions feel real even when the context is oogie-boogie poppycock. The Philippous nurture the characters and performances at the same time they deliver throbbing, miserable horror for our eyes, ears and oh-so-vulnerable hearts, and our brains a little, too. It’s essentially a story about wounded people who will never heal, only deal, and it delivers on multiple levels. We should be thrilled the Philippous saw through the Faustian Hollywood bargain in front of them, and brought themselves back to the horror genre.
Our Call: Is Bring Her Back sponsored by Better Help? STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.