Australians watched on in awe in 2022 as grubby YouTubers the RackaRacka brothers transformed, Cinderella-style, into horror auteurs with their debut screamer, Talk To Me.
Three years later, Michael and Danny Philippou have returned with Bring Her Back, a step up for the twin brothers in terms of style, character and disturbing content.
Bring Her Back begins with the most tragic of circumstances and it only gets worse from there. Parentified big brother Andy (Billy Barrett) and his visually impaired tween sister Piper (Sora Wong) find their father and only guardian dead on the shower floor.
Social services try to split the siblings up but, after Andy’s determined protest, they both get shipped off to Laura’s (Sally Hawkins) house.
Andy shelters his little sister Piper from anything dark, sometimes against her better interests. (Supplied: Sony Pictures)
Laura is your mum’s hippyish friend that gave you bad vibes as a kid. She’s sweet, if not a little bit ditzy, but will stomp all over any reasonable boundary while gaslighting anyone that will listen to make out she’s the victim.
She’s obviously not happy about having to take Andy in for three months before he turns 18, but Piper is the apple of her eye. It turns out she had a biological child, Cathy, who was also visually impaired, but drowned not long ago, and it’s clear she sees Piper as her replacement — it’s only later we find out how literally she means that.
But there’s one more child living in Laura’s lush South Australian home.
Ten-year-old Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips) is introduced shirtless and standing in an ominously drained pool. “Selectively mute” and sporting a mysterious shiner, Ollie is relegated to his locked room — that is, when he’s not being led by Laura in the middle of the night to a deadbolted shed.
Laura says she’s Ollie’s mum but something feels off. (Supplied: Sony Pictures)
Much will be made of the skilfully executed gore in Bring Her Back. It is plentiful, extreme, sickeningly realistic and will make you rethink every time you absent-mindedly nibble a snack off the end of a knife. But it never slips into being gratuitous and is a wonderful showcase for the practical effect work coming from AACTA winners Make-up Effects Group and prosthetics wiz Larry Van Duynhoven (whose work you’ll also be able to catch in upcoming Aus body horror Together.)
And behind the blood and viscera in Bring her Back, there is an affecting, character-forward rumination on grief and the lengths people will go to in order to avoid it.
Grief horror has become a well-worn trope with Australian films like Lake Mungo and The Babadook championing the subgenre. It’s become so popular that it runs the risk of being over-utilised. But the intricacies and performances of Bring Her Back’s core four characters keep the film feeling fresh.
Barrett, a young British actor with an international Emmy already under his belt, sells both the vulnerability and anger that comes with being an adolescent male. He acts as Piper’s protector, which manifests in delicate gestures like flipping a sun visor up so his sister can enjoy the afternoon beams on her face. But he also shelters his sister with lies to keep her from life’s harsher visuals, and expresses his pent-up frustrations by pumping iron and slamming creatine.
Wong, who the Philippous plucked out of a school drama class for her first theatrical role, is treated like a wounded dove in a sea of hungry vultures. Young and easily influenced, you’ll want to reach through the screen to protect Piper, until she proves that she’s more than capable of protecting herself.
If there is any justice in the world, Bring Her Back would herald a third Oscar nomination for Sally Hawkins. The British actor not only absolutely embodies the 90s kooky, crunchy Australian mum accent but her journey as Laura is nothing short of phenomenal.
You’d wish you had never seen what’s on the inside of Laura’s heavily locked garden shed. (Supplied: Sony Pictures)
The undeniable Big Bad of the film, she dares to touch on the uncomfortable reality that some parents only care about the wellbeing of their own biological child. Laura is conniving, manipulative and, eventually, outright abusive — but she’s also pitiful as a mother enslaved to the idea she could see her daughter again.
However, the MVP trophy belongs to Phillips (How To Make Gravy) as Ollie. Barely into double digits, the film labours him with extreme content that he pulls off with aplomb. Perpetually covered with sickly blue veins and open gashes, he only has about five lines of dialogue. But his physical performance — accentuated by his impossibly wide, round, glassy eyes — is where most of the visual terror of the film is derived. There are multiple stomach-sinking moments during run time and it’s always when Ollie is on screen.
Jonah Wren Phillips’ parents, who are both actors, joined the up-and-coming star on the set of Bring Her Back. (Supplied: Sony Pictures)
With the performances on lock, the Philippous relish in filling the gaps with their trademark humour and Australiana flare. (Exposing an international audience to Shannon Noll’s ‘What About Me’ AND ‘Untouched’ by The Veronicas is surely grounds for an Order of Australia.)
Writers Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman leave just enough of a curiosity gap in how the mechanics of Laura’s cult activities actually work, ensuring many exciting post-watch debates. Everything in their writing is cyclical, with visual and aural motifs bending back around on themselves in ways you would never predict. They’re also smart enough to include a reassuring coda to keep the film slipping into complete misery porn.
If this is what the future of Australian horror looks like, then it is very bright (and absolutely terrifying).
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Bring Her Back is in Australian cinemas now.
