When I first saw Talk to Me (the secret screening at Overlook Festival in 2023), I knew I had seen something special. It felt like the dawning of a new era of horror, and not just because it announced the arrival of Danny and Michael Philippou, a duo of Aussie filmmakers who, with their feature debut, successfully made the jump from YouTube to the big screen. The reason it felt new is that it announced a subgenre shift within the world of horror. While yes, the TikTok generation has had stylistic impact on filmmaking, namely with the dawn of “screen life” films, Talk to Me was one of the first to tie into its themes the notion that many kids and teens are pretty much always auditioning for whoever will look their way. With this inclination comes plenty of lapses in judgement, based heavily around a disinclination to ask the trickiest of questions: “why?”
And it’s a question that, through its absence, becomes an avenue through which horror films can insert cruel ambiguity — which is how you create fear.
The Philippou brothers have followed up their near-perfect debut with an equally scary, albeit classier affair that uses the same purposeful lack of clear answers to manifest serious frights. Bring Her Back is a film that avoids direct explanation of its own internal logic, instead devoting its runtime to putting a duo of well-realized characters through the physical and emotional wringer. It’s a film that pulls no punches in its brutal telling of a foster family situation gone horribly, horribly wrong, and it’s one that left the entire theater, many of whom were horror zealots, squirming in shocked discomfort. I’ll put it this way: At many a press screening, critics and fans will be given promotional items branded with the film’s title which tie into the film in some way. For Bring Her Back, the title was emblazoned on boxes of dental floss in a font and color that evoked dripping blood. The box itself was shaped like a tooth. This meant that some sort of dental trauma was coming…
…and boy did it!
I won’t spoil the context, but my typically iron stomach was tested (unhelped by the fact that I spent the first quarter of 2025, and pretty much every dollar I earned, at the endodontist).
Yet despite the film’s ability to gross out the viewer, Bring Her Back is far from a “gross out” film, nor are its stomach-churning moments employed solely for shock value. For all its rather frank physical horror, it’s the story, the characters, and the aforementioned ambiguity that prove the most haunting. Between this and Talk To Me; the Philippou boys wear their cultural background on their sleeves. They’ve come up in a world where institutions are not to be trusted and the best place to get your information is also the worst: from around the way. Be it the internet, the television, or a random video tape that found its way to you, whatever you choose to believe can be easily validated — and any information you don’t like can be dismissed just as simply.
Sally Hawkins plays Laura, a foster parent who has taken two newly orphaned children into her care. Andy (Billy Barratt) is a few months short of 18, and it’s his hope that once he becomes a legal adult, he’ll be able to assume guardianship of his younger sister Piper (Sora Wong). It’s a tricky situation given Andy’s turbulent behavioral past as well as Piper’s condition: she’s legally blind. Anyone with a heart can see that the two of them belong together and that Andy takes his sister’s care rather seriously. But the law goes by the book, not by feels, and Laura, who has another special needs child in her care, would really like it if Piper stuck around for awhile. It’s a trio of tremendous performances, one of which is coming from a complete newcomer (this is Wong’s only credit).
What follows is a riff on the “something is fucked up here, but nobody believes me” subgenre, and the filmmakers milk this tension for all of its gruesome worth. It’s a cruel, unforgiving movie, and as such, there’s no way to telegraph who will live and die, or if the resolution will be just. The resulting experience is consistently uncomfortable and regularly shocking, and since the characters, both good and bad, are realized in depth and motivated believably, Bring Her Back is able to capitalize on the emotional horror as much as the physical. This is all through a slow release of information surrounding the film’s internal mythology which, as I previously mentioned, isn’t fully exposited. We just have to go with it — we’re only privy to the data that our characters have, and those most directly tied to this story’s particular brand of supernaturalia are only operating with limited understanding as well.
And this is perhaps the film’s scariest element: monumental, reality-bending abilities wielded irresponsibly by people with low-information, who are in turn shielded by immovable and quite human power structures.
That hurt to type because ::gestures in all directions with an incredulous look in his eyes::
Stylistically, Bring Her Back is more accomplished than Talk to Me, if a little less immediately accessible. The overall craft refinement speaks to two very keyed-in filmmakers interested in doing original stuff. And while my tastes tend to align with the rough-around-the-edges nature of their first film, this excellent sophomore feature is just as gnarly and horrifying where it counts. Further stylistic refinement is more than welcome. Danny and Michael Philippou are undoubtedly going to change the game. Maybe they already have.
Directed by Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Written by Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman
Starring Sally Hawkins, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Billy Barratt
Rated R, 104 minutes
