Bring Her Back Review

The Philippou Twins have transferred from YouTube to theatrical filmmakers with great success. Their first film, Talk to Me, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was a great horror film. Their follow-up film, Bring Her Back, has been met with similar critical success.

Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) are step-siblings who are put into foster care after Andy’s dad dies. They are under the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a strange woman, with an even stranger foster son, Olly (Jonah Wren Phillips). Andy suspects that there’s something more sinister going on in the remote house.

When my screening of Bring Her Back finished a woman behind me said to her friend ‘I was sweating her ass off’ and said it was intense. It was a straight-to-the-point summarisation of the film. Bring Her Back was a gruesome and genuinely terrifying film with scenes that were shocking and horrifying, just like the Philippou Twins’ first film. Bring Her Home earned an 18 rating in the UK, and it was well deserved.

A lot of the creep factor came from Olly. Olly was mute and disturbed, doing many unusual actions. Olly was a changeling because he looked like a child but was really an empty husk who wandered around and gave in to his base instincts. He was more zombie-like. Phillips gave a terrific performance as this unsettling presence, and Olly will probably be seen as one of the great creepy children in cinema.

One of the great aspects of Talk to Me was that it was really about mental health. It was a story about a young woman struggling with grief and depression, whilst also looking at party drugs and viral clout chasing. Bring Her Back also had themes about grief and death. Laura lost her 12-year-old daughter, who also had a visual impairment, and she was trying to make Piper her replacement daughter. However, Andy was Piper’s protective big brother, and Laura needed to take him out. Laura gaslit Andy throughout the film by framing him for acts he didn’t commit, forcing him into other actions that made the young man do actions that he was uncomfortable with, and used his trauma and past against him.

Andy was a big, strapping lad, but had massive mental scars. He was physically abused by his father, which led to Andy being unable to take a shower. Andy had a dark past in that he was struggling to process, and it was made worse by being forced to exchange a physically abusive parent for a mentally abusive one. Barrett has proven himself as an excellent child actor, such as in the TV Movie Responsible Child and Apple TV’s Invasion, and Bring Her Back shows he can transition to adult acting. Andy was a gentle giant to Piper, but had anger bubbling inside of him. Barrett showed he can perform with a convincing Australian accent.

Bring Her Back’s big draw was Sally Hawkins. She has won an Oscar and has always given a good performance. She has played kooky characters in Happy-Go-Lucky and the Paddington movies, and in Bring Her Back, she twists this kookiness into something more sinister. Laura wore bright and colourful cardigans like Mrs. Brown, and acted welcoming to Piper, but there were warning signs such as playing loud music, and having an unusual ornament in her home. Paddington’s fate would have been a lot darker if he had moved in with this Hawkins character. The usually likeable Hawkins was detestable in this Aussie horror flick.

The Philippou Twins introduced mystery into Bring Her Home. The film opens with a Satanic ritual, and Laura was watching tapes of these rituals. Some moments hint at something bigger, like when Andy quickly pointed his phone at Olly. A sequel to Talk to Me was green-lit soon after that film’s release. It seems like the Philippou Twins were future-proofing Bring Her Back in case a sequel or spin-off gets commissioned.

On a final note, along with Memoir of a Snail, Bring Her Back shows that Australia must have some of the worst child protection in the developed world.

Talk to Me and Bring Her Back shows the Philippou Twins are some they are some of the best horror filmmakers and Australian creatives currently working. Bring Her Back was a dark and intense film that lived up to the genre definition of horror.