BRING HER BACK (2025)

If Bring Her Back were the Philippou brothers’ first film, I’d feel the urge to be kinder to it. It has all the hallmarks of an early feature from filmmakers who show promise and move on to more daring, polished, and interesting projects. It displays a lot of the same thematic and visual elements that made their Talk to Me such a gripping film, but lacking the terrifying logic that guided it. It’s like looking back at Killer’s Kiss after watching The Shining, and seeing the filmmaker play the right notes but not quite master the music yet. The trouble is that Talk to Me was their first film, and Bring Her Back their second. It’s definitely a film by the same artists, but it backs off before ramping to the heights of terror that Talk to Me did. It feels like a less mature work.

It does, admittedly, feature two exceptional lead performances by two young actors, Billy Barratt and Sora Wong, that elevate it above what its facile story offers. If this movie puts them on the map, it's done its job.

When step-siblings Andy (Barratt) and Piper (Wong) find their father dead, Family Services has no option but to place them both in foster care. Because Andy will turn 18 in a few months, they're confident they can tough it out until then. Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former social worker who lives in a remote mid-century modern labyrinth of a house (an effective horror movie setting for any A24 movie like this one), is eager to take in Piper, who is sight impaired, but needs some convincing before she allows Andy to come along. It isn't long before Andy begins to notice warning signs that Piper doesn't, particularly the feral child named Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) who appears to be living there. When we learn (early on--not a spoiler) that Laura had a daughter who was also blind, and who recently passed away, it's pretty easy to put together who the Her is in the title, and who will need to go away for Her to be brought back.

Even with only their second feature, the directors already display a unique style that many filmmakers are likely to mimic in the years ahead. They have a way of composing a shot, through the use of close-ups as well as slow zooms, pans, and turns, that subtly suggests something is wrong even when everything seems to be in its place. The high point is in their portrayal of Oliver as the linchpin to the movie's plot: he's the only part of the movie with any mystery behind it, and a kitchen table scene between him and Andy is probably the only scene in the movie where I had truly no idea what would happen, and was gleefully and gruesomely surprised.

The directors mine a good bit of tension from Andy's growing frustration at knowing what his happening to him and his sister and having no way to get them out, and Barratt believably plays Andy as a flawed and often impulsive teenager who nonetheless still wants to be a good older brother. The relationship between Andy and Piper always feels genuine.

The story, though, isn't strong enough to sustain the movie. The plot feels very much like a Goosebumps novel: for better or worse, it pretty much goes where you think it will, and doesn't make many detours. Once we surmise what's happening, very early, a lot of it feels like going through the motions. Great horror filmmakers are able to tease us with what's going to happen but leave some mystery as to how it will get there, and there are some great moments in Talk to Me where we can sense what's coming but not exactly how. Here we mostly know how as well, especially in the last act, which involves a lot of characters driving back and forth to and from places, and features my least favorite movie trope: a car coming out of nowhere and smacking one of the characters by surprise. It should have been retired after Final Destination, and even the newest entry in that series chose to cheekily make fun of this cliche rather than repeat it.

The best I can say about Sally Hawkins's performance is that she embodies Laura in exactly the way the filmmakers need her to. They ought to have been more ambitious with her. Hawkins is capable of easily transitioning from an eccentric to a monster, but the filmmakers make her a little bit too much of each. The more subtle ways she tries to split up the two siblings are appropriately eerie, including baiting Andy into violence as well as one especially nasty way of gaslighting him that I won't reveal. However, certain scenes seem to set up a different, more explicitly cruel and crass character that doesn't jell with what follows. For instance, the scene at their father's funeral feels like it was included so the filmmakers could get something gross and off-putting into their movie; it paints Laura as a dangerous kook rather than a calculated villain. The horror might have arisen from her outward friendliness and trustworthiness while her devious side would come from her grief and desperation.

Bring Her Back is a swing and a miss, even if it's a more satisfying miss than most. Those who haven't seen Talk to Me will find a similar frightening intensity in that film that ratchets slowly throughout it, but with a better story. The Philippous are still the real deal, and I'm still excited to see what they come out with next.

** 1/2 out of ****