‘Bring Her Back’ Produces Strikingly Grotesque Imagery Inspired by Grief 

Alci Rengifo

Danny and Michael Philippou’s “Bring Her Back” assaults viewers with a series of striking, grotesque images that use the plot as a reason to exist. The Australian YouTube horror-comedy pranksters-turned-filmmakers seem to have found their strength, which is to put together mini nightmares onscreen. Yes, the screenplay does pretend to be about much deeper subject matter, mostly grief. Orphans, child abuse and dark forces are also at play. The movie takes on such a hallucinatory, almost free form structure that it all floats around like a murky puzzle. The directors’ real aim seems to be to create a frontal assault sure to torture any squeamish audience members.

The set-up begins in the Australian city of Adelaide, where a visually impaired young girl, Piper (Sora Wong) and her older brother Andy (Billy Barratt), arrive home to find their father collapsed in the shower, smeared in vomit and dead. Now orphans, the siblings are ordered into foster care until Andy turns 18, in three months, and can file for custody of his sister. Their assigned foster parent is Laura (Sally Hawkins), a counselor living in a secluded home with an instantly eerie feel. There’s already a young boy under Laura’s care, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who is seemingly mute with a strange purple mark under his eye. Soon enough, strange things start happening with particular connections to a grisly VHS tape of a mysterious cult ritual.

The Philippous first broke onto the scene in 2023 with their hit “Talk to Me,” a possession thriller that truly gets under your skin. “Bring Her Back” is less heartfelt and focused. Their models seem to be recent “elevated horror” films like “Hereditary,” where domestic topics become conduits for nightmarish freak outs. From the beginning the movie feels relentless with grainy footage of cult members carrying out extreme acts of violence, including cannibalism. Never will the plot explain just what this cult is or why Laura has a massive, white powder circle around her house similar to the cult’s iconography. Such questions are easy to forget because of the jaw-droppers the directors conjure, including self-mutilation in the form of chewing on butcher knives and bloated, evil children. Oliver is clearly some kind of demon kid, with the movie’s most gruesome makeup and shockers. The scene where he tries to chew through a wooden table is the least unnerving.

There is a basic narrative thread to follow centered around Laura having lost a daughter in a drowning accident not too long ago and her obsession with possibly bringing her back, as the title hints. Sally Hawkins, like the rest of the cast, pushes to the edge of sanity with her performance as a woman pretending to be well. Another familiar story device the younger actors perform well is the use of entrapment. To the outside world, especially the foster care services, Laura seems like such a well-balanced individual. Inside her home, Andy in particular starts to become tortured by horrific visions, compounded by the shame of wetting his bed out of an untold trauma. Sora Wong is commendable in her performance even if Piper feels too much like a convenient plot tool. Her blindness is supposed to raise tension since we can see the threats she’s oblivious to.

Like Ari Aster, the Philippous are attracted to the way cinema can make the disturbing feel of nightmarish images feel close and immediate. Their camera closes in on grotesqueries that can slowly emerge from another room or in the shower. They want you to see the flesh torn off an arm or look right into the eyes of a dead body. At times it gets too calculated, as when Laura virtually forces Andy to kiss the forehead of his dead father’s corpse at the latter’s funeral. Other images fly at us without context, expecting us to assume the mere idea of a cult should be enough of an explanation. Dark forces at work and that’s all we need to know. Other times, the film can also become too cruel, as if the shocks are the only goal. And yet, this is an effective slice of horror on a visceral level. The shocks are well-crafted, at times haunting. A stronger script might have served them even better, but this remains a directing duo worth keeping an eye on. 

“Bring Her Back” releases May 30 in theaters nationwide.