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Bring Her Back and the Abominable Horrors of Grief

Just two movies into their career, YouTubers turned horror directors Danny and Michael Philippou have set a stable framework of what makes their movies distinct. Essentially it can be boiled down to a combination of emotionally rich characterization peppered in trauma and tragedy with a visceral brutality to its violence and intensity. The latter isn’t so uncommon or shocking a quality of horror anymore (though the Philippous still do their best to make you recoil), it’s the former that makes for a more investing experience. They want to make sure you care about their characters and their relationships through the harrowing circumstances they are put through both physically and psychologically. Talk to Me and their new sophomore film Bring Her Back, accomplish this quite effectively, while also representing well the Philippous’ home of Adelaide, Australia -an unexpected hub for freakish supernatural horror it seems.
Bring Her Back delves again into themes of possession and graphic occultism, while maintaining a very humane core -in this case the relationship between two teenage step-siblings, Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who lose their father and are placed in foster care. Andy is only a few months away from being able to apply for guardianship of Piper who he is extremely protective of due to her visual impairment -but in the meantime they are put in the care of a counsellor Laura (Sally Hawkins), who lost her own daughter some time prior. Naturally, Laura registers to Andy as a touch sinister early on while showering Piper with immediate and in some cases irresponsible affection. Also, she keeps around another mute foster child called Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) whom she seems to have little control over.
Hawkins's performance in this film almost seems designed to delineate on some level the image she cultivated in the Paddington movies as a sweet icon of maternal perfection. That performance is too stable to falter but she makes a noble enough effort here, with her bouts of irrational behaviour even before her true malevolent intentions are made clear. The way she casually pretends her stuffed dog is real for an instant for Piper or her gall to start scrolling through Andy's phone the moment his back is turned; pressuring Andy to show affection at his father's funeral and then insisting the family try to "have fun" in its wake -all speaks to a figure who at least is concernedly out-of-touch for a counsellor when it comes to social graces. But Hawkins does use her more characteristic joyful demeanour to undercut and contrast a darker nature. She proves quite good at weaponizing a nurturing attitude and exerting a scary control over vulnerable kids.
We know the extent of her menace early, and even her ultimate plan. The opening provides a sign of it and hideous video tapes that she watches throughout illustrate exactly the torture she looks to inflict on two children, for the chance to bring back her daughter. Despite her attitude in light of the funeral, it is indeed her inability to grieve healthily that is behind everything -and several scenes of reflection between her and Andy and Piper, flashes of happy memories with her daughter, provide an ample grounding to her madness and desperation, heightened too in relation to the bond between the siblings.
It is a very endearing relationship, clouded though it may be by Andy's overbearing nature and habit of sugar-coating things for Piper -something she is aware of, to the point the pair have a code-word "grapefruit" to denote what is an earnest feeling or statement. It's the kind of detail that gives the relationship a lived-in feel and a sense of real heart which  accentuates the stakes all the more when Laura starts feeding paranoia to them, when gaslighting and deception become her tools of manipulating Piper against her brother to the ends of exerting more singular control -particularly through invocation of Andy’s past spurts of violence. Barratt and Wong both give good performances, especially Wong as a first-time actress.
Barratt is called upon to carry a lot of the film though, as both avatar of considerable discomfort around Laura and a vessel of insight into the issues and trauma at the hands of an abusive father -which has made mourning difficult and erected barriers of trust for Laura to take advantage of. The sins of parents towards children is a prominent theme, and the horrors that stem from them are thus connected. While what Laura is cooking up is more vile and abhorrent, the haunting effects of a shower for Andy (previously used as a sound barrier against beatings) and apparitions of his cruel zombified father berating and torturing him are just as haunting in their highly tangible psychological footing.
But the Philippous of course pair this with more conventionally shocking reams of violence and body horror. There is some quite disturbing second-hand cannibalism and self-mutilation -especially one beat initially involving a piece of fruit- and often it is the possessed and petrified Oliver at the centre of it. He is on one hand your typical scary child for a movie like this -lurking about and staring ominously with notable alienating features in things like his hairlessness and extremely bloodshot eyes. But he is certainly not a one-note monster, and as the truth of his story is revealed you are drawn to care about him and fully consider all the more the cruelties he has been subjected to.
Yet he is not fully a character either, cast by the directors as more of a violence powder keg of tension. And his hollowness is not the only questionable means of relaying that for this movie. Particularly there is a drastic choice in the last act that cuts a central character arc short for the sake of emboldening the intensity of the climax. It is effective in this regard for the drama but leaves the story itself less satisfying and patently grim, lending it an overly dismal tenor. The focus shifts due to this in a way that doesn't quite gel with the momentum of the film before, and yet for its dimness it leads to a beat of sentiment starkly difficult to accept for the faith in humanity it aims to extol. Especially in light of everything just witnessed.
For going out on this rather feeble note, Bring Her Back does ultimately fall short of the Philippous' prior endeavour. Yet the strength of its mood and characterization is not negated by this and the movie still feels like a chilling, worthy exercise. The Philippous remain very capable directors, in the mold of Ari Aster yet distinct; and in among the freaky cult rituals and themes on grief and trust, there is some solid critique of the foster care system and more broadly institutional neglects of the complex emotions of young people. It certainly tackles their fears and vulnerabilities with intuition and mindfulness. A harrowing movie, in often eminently sharp ways.

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