Amongst all the summer blockbusters, there has been a release of this lower budget Australian supernatural psychological horror film, directed by Danny and Michael Philippou and written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman.
After being orphaned, 17 year old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his partially sighted step-sister Piper (Sora Wong) are sent to live with Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former counsellor who is recovering from the death of her daughter and who also fosters a mute boy named Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). Andy struggles to settle in as he becomes increasingly unsettled by Laura and Oliver’s strange behaviour.
The Phillippou brothers brought us the well received Talk to Me a couple of years ago and the critical reception for Bring Her Back has exceeded the one for that. I can understand why, as this is a deeply unsettling film. I have not felt so unnerved in a cinema since seeing Midsommar in 2019.
It has enough bloody moments, and times when I could no longer look at the screen, to satisfy gore fans. But there is much more to the story than that. At its core, it is a study of grief and how it can consume you, making you act irrationally. It also touches on the long term effects of childhood abuse.
Hawkins is scarily brilliant as a previously caring and successful woman driven insane by the death of her daughter. Wong is terrific too as the kind Piper and she shares a nice chemistry with Barratt who is good as the protective Andy.
The only part of this intense movie that I did not find satisfying are the scenes of a blood thirsty, cannibalistic cult, watched by Laura on old videotapes, that give her inspiration to act in the way she does. I felt that needed more explanation. Where did the footage come from? How did Laura get the recordings? It felt like something out of a more conventional horror movie.
But that was only a small part of Bring Her Back, which left me thinking and more than a little discombobulated.
Rating: 8 out of 10