It hungers. The emptiness, the void, the absence that entropically pulls every molecule of your being when you are grieving an inconceivable loss. It hungers and cannot be satiated by time, comfort, reason, wisdom, or fleeting warmth. Loss can make the past too painful to contemplate and the future has been stolen. Death is a thief and a despoiler.
Danny and Michael Philippou examined grief as a doorway to the unspeakable in their debut film Talk to Me. The darkness of their previous film has become a Vanta Black in Bring Her Back which doubles down (far down) on the ache of what remains after a loved one has gone. Siblings Piper (Sora Wong) and Andy (Billy Barratt) are thrust into child services when their father dies, and they become orphans. Piper is sight impaired, and Andy has always “looked” at the world for her – telling white and other lies to give her the sense that there is something lovely out there, although in truth his experience has been vastly different from his sister’s.
Andy is almost eighteen and wants to apply for custody of Piper in a few months. In the interim they are sent to stay with foster mother Laura (Sally Hawkins) who at first appears to be a fun and adorably ditsy adult figure. Laura immediately takes to Piper who reminds her of her recently deceased daughter Cathy. Like Piper, Cathy was sight impaired, and was/is everything to Laura. “I would give anything to hear her call me mum just one more time…” It’s a common refrain amongst the bereaved and doesn’t seem all that sinister until Laura begins to prove just what she would do. Something that involves Cathy’s cousin Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) a silent and solitary young boy who seems to be in another world, and from the videotaped ritual seen at the beginning of the film, perhaps he is.
Taken from suburban Adelaide to the hills, Andy and Piper end up on Laura’s large property replete with swimming pool, caged chickens, and a locked shed. Laura’s zaniness and her habit of calling everyone “love” (a specific kind of Australianism) at first makes Andy feel that he and Piper are safe for the few months they will be with her, even if she has installed Piper into Cathy’s room which hasn’t been changed since her death and has put Andy in what is essentially a junk room. No one asks where Oliver sleeps and as the child is mute, he cannot answer. He seems to spend all his time around the drained swimming pool or pounding at the shed door.
It's not simply Oliver’s bizarre behaviour (there is a scene with a knife and rockmelon (cantaloupe) which will be hard to forget) that makes Andy uncomfortable. Laura can easily turn on Andy reminding him that he has a past that she can report if he steps out of line – there is an edge of cruelty to Laura which could be explained by her own pain, but also there is a deliberate looking away from how her actions impact anyone but Piper.
Bring Her Back is a much slower and creeping experience than Talk to Me. The horror is intimate, unpredictable, and profoundly grisly. The practical effects and prosthetic work are scarring and unforgiving. The sound design and camerawork uniquely claustrophobic. The sense that Andy and Piper are trapped is extended not only because of Piper’s disability which makes her more vulnerable in an environment she doesn’t know, but also because Andy has a child record for violence. Laura’s power over them is absolute and when she begins to behave in a manner that initially appears to make no sense, such as urinating in a vessel and pouring it on Andy’s crotch when he is asleep, the mystery of what she is up to and why is chilling. How exactly do two orphans who don’t want to be split into separate foster homes fight back against a woman who, to the outside, is the perfect person to care for them?
Bring Her Back has aspects of supernatural horror, but the true horror is the isolation Piper and Andy experience with someone whose behaviour is driven by extreme emotion. Sally Hawkins is excellent and chilling as Laura, first time actor Sora Wong is accomplished and along with Billy Barratt, the two make for compelling and sympathetic protagonists. However, it is the almost entirely physical performance of Jonah Wren Phillips that pushes Bring Her Back into a classic of the “creepy kids” pantheon.
Bring Her Back is as unutterably sad as it is disturbingly frightening. The end of the film might offer a small amount of catharsis, but all that proceeds it is upsettingly unsettling. Michael and Danny Philippou may just be the premiere horror auteurs in Australia after only two films. Grief in horror films is hardly a new concept, but the way the Philippou brothers render it is stunningly real inside their genre trappings.
Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sora Wong
Writers: Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman
Producers: Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings
Composer: Cornel Wilczek
Cinematographer: Aaron McLisky
Editor: Geoff Lamb
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