Hey, remember one review ago when I said death sucks? Grief makes it worse.
Danny and Michael Philippou’s sophomore feature, “Bring Her Back,” is their second film about the misery and danger that comes from never letting go of the dead. Their first, “Talk to Me,” was an alarmingly assured debut, a truly frightening tale about a mourning teenager who abuses a mysterious relic to reach out to her dead mother. “Bring Her Back” is a film about a mother with her own grotesque method of dealing with the death of her daughter. They are similar films. They are not the same.
“Talk to Me” is a malevolent slumber party movie, a cautionary tale in which teenagers defy the rules and pay unholy consequences. “Bring Her Back” is also about a teenager, Andy (Billy Barratt), whose father dies unexpectedly. He wants to raise his younger, visually disabled sister, Piper (Sora Wong), but he’s not quite 18. So instead, they’re both sent to Laura, played by Sally Hawkins, who clearly thinks Piper is a godsend and clearly doesn’t want Andy around at all.
Laura had a visually disabled daughter of her own, but she drowned some time ago and she’s filling that void in her life with new foster children. Not just with Piper but also Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a boy who doesn’t speak and stares eerily into the middle distance. At first, Laura seems harmless enough, a little obsessive and over-attentive perhaps, and weirdly insistent that Andy kisses his dead father on the lips at the funeral, but Andy starts to notice serious red flags. Worse, Laura starts blaming him for every weird thing that transpires, making everyone else question his sanity.
“Bring Her Back,” like many great horror movies, hardly needs to dip into the supernatural to shred our nerve-endings. The insidiousness of abuse, the manipulations and insulations, are frightening all on their own. But there’s an undercurrent of the unholy in the Philippous’ new film. It’s not the same dark magic we saw in “Talk to Me,” but they both could have been purchased in the same cursed antique shop. And they both promise a lot, and take a lot more.
Some subgenres are in desperate need of a new name. “Bring Her Back” belongs in a category with two insulting monikers, “hagsploitation” and “psycho biddy.” In these films older actresses get plum roles in fright flicks, with free reign to dominate the screen and act — and slash — their hearts out. Sally Hawkins is one of the best actors we have, but although she’s made several monster movies (she even earned an Oscar nomination for “The Shape of Water”), she’s never delved into the realm of full-fledged cinematic nightmares … until now. And it’s a perfect fit for her sensibilities.
“Bring Her Back” is just about as naked and uncompromising about emotional turmoil as movies get. It’s like a Mike Leigh movie where someone also stabs themselves in the mouth. Hawkins plays Laura like a real, pathetic, dangerous person who just happens to be up to something unimaginably gruesome. She’s let grief warp her into an unrecognizable creature. She’s only wearing the visage of former self as a flimsy costume. It’s a raw and devastating portrayal that grounds “Bring Her Back” in haunting humanity.
We can wrap our heads around Laura’s motivations, but it’s impossible to forgive them. Watching poor Barratt’s teen hero try to maintain his sanity, and wrestle with his very real tortures and almost impossible sacrifices, is maddening. The world was against him from the start, everyone who was supposed to care for him failed miserably, and he’s still trying — failing, but trying — to be the kind of caregiver he never had.
“Bring Her Back” is a slow burn of a movie, but it’s not slow. It ratchets dread. It reaches a crescendo eventually, and the journey seems to have been worth it. Well, worth it for the audience — I’m not sure any of the sad figures in Danny and Michael Philippou’s story will be happy about how it turns out. The characters in “Talk to Me” could miserably commiserate.
In just two films, these maestros have found a niche for themselves, weaving unnatural tales of terror out of our natural relationships with death. These films are not reassurances. They are not, in a conventional sense, helpful. They are, however, unconventionally beautiful. “Talk to Me” and “Bring Her Back” are confrontations with the ugliest pain we can feel, in which any effort to take arms against a sea of troubles is the end of us all. That’s a horror that’s powerful. That’s a horror with meaning.
“Bring Her Back” premieres in Australia on May 29 before coming to U.S. theaters on May 30.
