A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.
With “Bring Her Back,” Danny and Michael Philippou take a giant leap forward, visually and emotionally. If their debut feature Talk to Me set them up as new young voices of horror, their second film makes them intelligent, adventurous movie-makers with serious chops. Better focused, more poetic, and quite a lot more tragic, “Bring Her Back” substitutes jump scares with tense, crawling dread and burrows into the deepest crevices of human bereavement.
The movie concerns teen siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) grappling with the loss of their father (Stephen Phillips) after an accident. Their new foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins), is eager to accept Piper into her home because she emulates Laura’s deceased daughter, Cathy, because of their shared visual disabilities. Andy, unwelcome in Laura’s home, slowly unravels the cultish vision Laura has for Piper, involving her mysterious child Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).
The direction of the Philippou brothers is also more focused and directed than previously. While “Talk to Me” was akin to a live wire, uncontrolled, “Bring Her Back” is measured and calculated. They have also tightened their style of filmmaking considerably: silence and emptiness are used to crushing effects, an atmosphere of malignant understatement. Once more, the sound design is outstanding: ambient hum, muffled voices, and sudden silences make one uneasy, more than any outright horror. The horror elements are present but subdued; the real horror is in the emotional investment of the movie.
Sally Hawkins is devastating as Laura, delivering a performance of inner anguish and incremental disintegration. She portrays a woman not only in mourning but dissolving before our very eyes: grasping the edge of hope, even as it consumes her. Hawkins never overplays; her expression, posture, and breathing possess the dignity of instants at which speech would be intrusive. It’s a career highlight performance by an actress already respected for emotional depth.
Jonah Wren Phillips, the unwilling child drawn into the mother’s collapse, is no less compelling. He possesses a hard-won sensitivity to the film: a young boy caught between obligation and terror. His acting with Hawkins is fine, but his subtle, watching presence leaves the strongest impression. It’s the kind of performance that doesn’t holler, but lingers.
In supporting roles, Billy Barratt and Sora Wong also add further emotional depth to the film’s emotional heart. Barratt, an elder teen with brewing anger after his father’s death, is kindhearted and unstable. His performance pins down the fury and confusion of loss, a combustible mix of grief and anger. He brings a tension that crackles to life in each and every scene he is in.
In a more subdued yet no less vital role, Sora Wong provides a beautifully nuanced performance. Navigating life as a young teen with developing blindness and evolving grief for her stepfather, there is never a dull moment in her performance. Wong’s contribution lies in keeping the film’s high-concept premise grounded; she never lets the drama elements drift into abstraction. There is a haunted glimmer in her eyes, as if she has herself been marked by the cost of what they are trying to achieve.
As a whole, the ensemble stitches together a quilt of quiet ruin. The emotional resonance of “Bring Her Back” is unavoidable: all the actors are battered by loss, stuck in a liminal world between hope and jeopardy. The Philippou brothers are restrained in letting their actors bear the story’s weight. When the supernatural creeps in, it’s a whisper, not a shout.
If the film has a fault, it’s in its ending. The third act is played for ambiguity, too much for some. Questions of what’s real, fantasy, and right and wrong are left unresolved. But that ambiguity is earned in a story so deeply immersed in the illogic of grief.
“Bring Her Back” is a triumph: unsettling, human, and emotionally shattering. It fulfills the promise of Talk to Me but goes further, showing that the Philippou brothers are not just horror auteur prospects but filmmakers who have something to say. Grounded by incredible turns from Sally Hawkins, Jonah Wren Phillips, Billy Barratt, and Sora Wong, this is horror in its most mature and sad form.
It doesn’t just chill, it wounds. And it stays with you.
In Theaters Friday, May 30th
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