2025 | rated R | Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt | directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou | 1 hr 44 mins | 3 out of 5 stars |
2025 Halloween Horrorfest #1
After the death of their father, brother Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind sister Piper (Sora Wong) are placed in the foster home of jovial caretaker Laura (Sally Hawkins) and her son Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who stopped talking since the death of Laura’s daughter Cathy, but very quickly things start to go awry with Oliver’s increasingly horrific, self-destructive behavior points to a ghastly secret that Laura is hiding and her plans for the siblings.
The highest compliment that I can give to the Philippou brother’s sophomore film is that for a lot of the movie I wasn’t sure if any of the characters were safe. Wes Craven once said that for a horror movie to really work you have to fear the director themselves is a bit deranged and I got that rare, highly commendable feeling watching Bring Her Back. This is a classy, atmospheric, visually polished A24 movie that beats with the soul of a grimy 70s exploitation film or French New Wave film. It grabs onto third rails your average mainstream horror movie wouldn’t touch and does so without a second thought, dragging us along for a marathon of child endangerment before we realize this isn’t the norm. Some of it is gnarly in a fun way, and some of it feels over the top and exploitative.
Firstly, the acting is terrific all around. At the center of it is a potentially touchstone horror performance from Sally Hawkins who commands all of the story’s wild shifts in her character’s demeanor effortlessly. She has the perfect facade of joy kindness needed to lure people into her world. The kind of creepiness I’ve felt from Hawkins since Happy Go Lucky. All of the child performers are also excellent, with none feeling like a ‘child performer’ and everything coming off as real. It’s probably why the movie gets away with all the gruesomeness it ultimately does.
A lot of my issues with Bring Her Back are in the story department and were strengths of the Philippou’s first film, the sensational smash hit Talk to Me. Where Talk clearly outlined the rules of its world – how long you could grip onto its possessed embalmed hand and what would happen if you broke those rules – Back instead wants to construct a mystery box that unfolds in front of the viewer as it does to its main characters. I enjoy a good puzzle box, but this one cuts into the thriller elements. Where Talk to Me’s 2nd half is such a thriller because we understand the rules and the stakes, too much of the Bring Her Back’s lore is still unfolding for us to know what to be worried about. By the third act of a movie like this we should have most of the story and be foot-on-the-gas in survival mode, not still slow-dripping out exposition to the point that what’s happening on screen is more baffling than it is frightening or intense.
The plot is full of a lot of conveniences in order to make it run. If you’re counting, we have both a blind and a mute child in the main cast so the plot can have a child that knows what’s going on unable to say, a child that doesn’t unable to see what’s in front of her, and another, the troubled kid who nobody believes. Everyone seems to have a “thing” as if the Philippou’s pantsed their way through a first draft throwing everything they could think of (cannibalism, pica, self-cannibalism, ghostly possession, rotting corpses, tragic child death back story) against the wall to see what sticks and reuse to pay off in the finale. And the finale, and a particularly lazy trope that they use to end the threat, is a disappointment that takes away the agency of our main characters. If the finale were better, I would be more inclined to go back through the movie to see how it was all put together. The destination isn’t particularly rewarding. Talk to Me had its moments of cruelty, child endangerment, gruesomeness and a bleak outcome, but all of it was set up, paid off and earned well.
That’s why it feels a bit manipulative. As if the movie was made so out of a series of outrageous individual scenes could be slapped up on Instagram or Tiktok and go as viral as the hand in Talk to Me. The Saltburn of 2025 horror. A 20 second clip of a child eating a blade from some clickbait account that doesn’t tell you the title fo the film in order to farm engagement in the comments. “Whoa, why’s that kid eating a knife blade? I’d better see this crazy movie.” You’ll get to the end of the movie and wont’ even know.
All that said, there is still artistry in what the Philippou brothers are going here. I respect the hell out of their approach to horror and their talent with the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of the genre. This is a messy 2nd film full of ideas and tropes, and some people may love it more for its sacred cow chewing fearlessness. It’s part Stephen King, part Speak No Evil, part atmospheric Elevated Horror, part gorehound shocker. It didn’t all work for me, but I’ll be anxious to see what the brothers cook up for their next film.