‘Bring Her Back’ Review: Sally Hawkins Is a Haunted Mother in Philippou Brothers’ Disturbing and Melancholic Follow-Up to ‘Talk to Me’

The grief coursing through Bring Her Back presents itself with a forceful bluntness. At the start of this haunting second feature from the Australian directing duo Danny and Michael Philippou, Andy (Billy Barratt) and his sister Piper (Sora Wong) find their father (Stephen Phillips) lying on the bathroom floor. His corpse, bloodied from a fall and slick with water from the still-running shower, sears itself into their minds. And his death, as sudden as it is agonizing, sets off a series of ominous events. 

In their debut Talk to Me, the Philippou brothers viscerally translated the emotional experience of cavorting with the spectral. They presented communing with the spirit world as an addictive high, and sharply rendered the pitfalls of adolescent ennui through bored teens testing the limits of a possessed totem. The longer the characters in Talk to Me spent with the cursed sculpture of a hand, the more the film revealed itself to be a chilling tale of grief between a young woman and her dead mother. With a commanding lead performance, unnerving sound design and impressive practical effects, Talk to Me established the pair as formidable additions to the horror landscape. 

In Bring Her Back, the directors explore how bereavement alters a person’s state of being — driving them to behave in ways that not only seem illegible but border on unimaginable. The film moves at a creeping pace and, at its strongest, functions as a disturbing study of grief. Working from a screenplay co-written by Bill Hinzman, the Philippous are less interested in juxtaposing good and evil and more curious about what drives people to act with malevolence. The directors team up again with Emma Bortignon to design a textured soundscape that heightens Bring Her Back’s atmosphere of dread and, as in Talk to Me, they wring strong performances out of relative newcomers. They also work with stellar makeup and VFX teams to craft harrowing and distinctive scenes of unflinching body horror. 

After their father dies, Andy and Piper are adopted by Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former social worker with an eccentric personality. The arrangement is strange from the beginning because Laura really only wanted to take in Piper, who, because of her low vision, reminds Laura of her recently deceased blind daughter. But Piper refuses to be separated from her older brother. Andy turns 18 in a few months, at which point he plans to become Piper’s legal guardian. With a little finessing, their case worker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) manages to convince Laura to take in both siblings. 

As soon as Andy and Piper arrive at Laura’s home, a modest cabin two-floor home tucked in the woods, Andy takes note of a few odd details. The first is the existence of Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a pale and quiet kid with a shaved head and wide eyes. Laura attributes the boy’s silence to a vague muteness, but Andy is not so sure. He becomes even more suspicious when Laura tells Piper — who, because of her impaired vision, can only see shapes and light — that Oliver has a head full of lush red hair.

The reality of their makeshift family becomes even more unusual when Laura tries to sabotage Andy’s chances of getting custody of Piper. She coaxes him into trusting her and then uses his secrets against him. All the while Andy becomes increasingly haunted by memories of his father’s body, and that fear forces him to acknowledge painful truths about his own past. 

While there is the occasional jump scare, the horror in Bring Her Back relies more on somber atmospherics than tangible frights. From the moment Laura appears on screen, there’s a noticeable edge to her chipper demeanor. Working with DP Aaron McLiskey, the Philippous shrewdly capture the terrifying intensity with which the foster mother stares at Piper and the sinister manner in which she treats Oliver — from withholding meals to locking him in a room when she leaves the house. It turns out that all of these actions are in service of a ritual she plans to perform in order to bring back the spirit of her dead daughter, Cathy (Mischa Heywood in flashbacks). Piper and Oliver are unwilling offerings and Andy, who quickly becomes attuned to Laura’s plans, is in the way. 

Bring Her Back works best on an experiential level. The Philippous key into the desperate emotional register of grief and everything, from the sound design to the score, help establish this anxious mood. They craft chilling scenes (special effects makeup are by Make-up Effects Group and Scarecrew Studios) that lean into psychological and body horror. One memorable moment involves a character biting into a knife and splicing their gums.

Performances are also key to reinforcing Bring Her Back’s creepy tenor, from Hawkins’ increasingly distressed portrait of a woman undone by loss to Wren Phillips’ engrossing portrayal as Oliver. Barratt and Wong have a tender, natural chemistry that makes their sibling bond easy to invest in. 

Given the dominant themes at play, it’s not surprising that Bring Her Back was written around the same time as Talk to Me. This film occasionally suffers from the same narrative waywardness as their debut, especially as Laura tries to more proactively realize her plan. Still, Bring Her Back operates on an intuitive level that makes it hard to shake even after the credits roll.