Twin-brother duo Danny and Michael Philippou got their start as YouTubers and in 2023 released their first feature film Talk To Me, a buzzy horror title purchased out of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Today we’re going to talk about their hotly anticipated follow-up film Bring Her Back, another horror release from A24. While there is no noted sophomore slump for the filmmakers and while the film marks a successful evolution of the themes explored in their first movie, I left Bring Her Back feeling sick to my stomach and disoriented. With the ongoing trend of winking horror movies or horror/comedy films, I think I forgot what a really devastating and dark horror movie is supposed to do. Bring Her Back gets under your skin and stays there, slowly burrowing into you until it leaves you shocked and stunned. These filmmakers are very good at what they do, but I never want to see this movie again.

17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and 14-year-old Piper (Sora Wong) are step-siblings whose father has just died. Andy plans to become the legal guardian of the visually impaired Piper when he turns 18 in a few months, but in the meantime they are placed with foster parent Laura (Sally Hawkins). It is clear from the beginning that something isn’t quite right with Laura, she had her own child who has passed away, and there’s something strange about Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), the mute child who lives with her. And it isn’t long before bad things start to happen. 

Bring Her Back contains violence so shocking and so realistic and so upsetting that I had to cover my eyes at certain points, and I walked into this film thinking there’s nothing I haven’t seen before in the horror genre and there’s nothing here that could shock me on a visceral level. But after the first big shock of the movie, I started to remember the graphic violent detail present in Talk to Me, and began to realize this is just what these filmmakers do. I’ve heard it said that a quote unquote real horror movie is supposed to leave you feeling hopeless, and devastated. That if you leave feeling like crap, this means the filmmaker had done their job correctly. And you definitely leave Bring Her Back feeling that way. You leave feeling gross. I could not wait to drive home and take a shower after seeing this movie. It added to the atmosphere that the latter half of this film is set during a torrential downpour and I left the theater last night during a violent thunderstorm. But I left thinking, how could all of this have happened to these nice people in this movie, and is there anything they could have done to stop it? 

I’m not sure if this is the project Sally Hawkins declined returning to the third Paddington film for, but if it was, she is an actress worthy of more respect than I’d realized. Mainly because her performance in Bring Her Back is something I have never seen her do before. It would be easy to compare this kind of performance to the ‘elevated’ horror performances of Toni Collette in Hereditary or Mia Goth in Pearl, but really Hawkins is doing something very different here. You realize that this character is the root of the problems in this story, but her own trauma runs so deep and her backstory is so devastating, it’s hard to write her off as primarily, exclusively evil. You can see that this kind of complexity must have driven Hawkins toward this character, but I was surprised to find she had something this dark in her paintbox. This is really stunning, unforgettable work.

The performances from the three child actors here are also pretty terrific. I’ve never seen any of these actors before and considering how young they all are, (Billy Barratt, the oldest, was probably around 16 years old at the time of filming), it really adds to the sense of terror lingering over this entire film. There’s a lot going on here with each individual character, and a lot of horrifying moments they all endure, and these kids are naturals. I have to wonder about their respective safety on the set and hope the content of this film was not traumatic for them to endure. It’s hard to imagine kids of any age dealing with the magnitude of horror present in this film. But many other young actors in horror films have done this kind of thing many times in years past, so I’m sure everyone is fine. The fact that the visceral intensity of the violence in Bring Her Back is shocking enough to make you wonder about the safety of child actors, has to be another point in the film’s favor overall.

Danny and Michael Philippou largely bring back the same creative team they made Talk to Me with. Cinematographer Aaron McLisky returns to shoot the film, and there’s some interesting camerawork on display here. Cornel Wilczek returns to do the score, and the music is very atmospheric and effectively sets the mood. And once again, there is a strong emphasis on practical effects rather than CGI, which absolutely adds to the sense of realism present in the brutality here. The sound design also effectively adds to the horror as well, as you’ll see and hear things in this film throughout that you may later wish you hadn’t. 

So, in conclusion, know yourself before going to see Bring Her Back. If what I’ve described sounds like the kind of thing you would enjoy, there’s a strong chance you will. If you’re a horror fan who is disillusioned or uninterested by the growing trend of the horror/comedy movie and you wish horror in general would get back to something unsettling and all-consuming, then this might be exactly the kind of thing for you. But if you’re a horror wuss, or even if you don’t think you are, Bring Her Back might prove to be too much for you and this may not be the best film to test your genre limits with. Because it will make you feel like garbage, it will ruin your entire day. But as an exploration of how cult-like behavior can fester its way into the lives of everyday people, there’s a lot I found fascinating about this film. I’m glad I saw it, and I hope I never see it again. However, I will absolutely watch whatever these filmmakers do next. Bring Her Back is one of the most genuinely terrifying films I’ve seen in years, and that is both an endorsement and a warning.