Bring Her Back
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“Be reliable. Be safe.”
Overview
Sally Hawkins leads an outstanding ensemble cast in Bring Her Back, a wet, nasty tale of grief from the Australian directors of Talk to Me. After the sudden death of their father teenage Andy (Billy Barratt) and his partially-sighted younger step sister Piper (Sora Wong) are placed with a foster carer— the kindly but nervous Laura (Hawkins), who is grieving a loss of her own. What at first seems like a bearable temporary solution becomes a claustrophobic nightmare as the children realise that something is deeply wrong with Laura's other foster child and that they are part of a monstrous plan that will lead to unthinkable evil. Intense and cathartic, this is an unabashed exercise in horror with a deep well of pain at the centre.
“Sublime lead performances...I’m beginning to think that the Philippous don’t just want to shatter our nerves: They want to break our hearts.”
“A meticulously coiled study of nasty doings under one roof, Bring Her Back convincingly argues that terror starts at home”
“An unreservedly soul-sick portrait of grief that comes from a place of such inflamed, naked vulnerability that it becomes almost unbearable to sit with”
Why See This Film
There's a tendency in media talking about (elevated) horror to emphasise that "it's about trauma" and the Philippous are well within that mode, but they've also engaged with something a lot of contemporary directors seem to have forgotten: it should also be scary, and occasionally really really gross. Sally Hawkins is absolutely committed in her role as a woman both fragile and frightening, grounding us in the bland Australian suburbs even as reality becomes ever more uncanny. In the grand tradition of Australian grotesque cinema, Bring Her Back is best experienced with a crowd.
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