Beware the foster mom with the dead daughter
The creepy horror shenanigans of YouTubers-turned-filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou caught fire with their feature debut “Talk to Me” (2022), which played smartly with genre, race and mythos. It didn’t all click, but you couldn’t forget it. With their follow-up, “Bring Her Back,” the brothers reach a new level in psychological horror that features several grim, look-away scenes.
Things begin badly for brother and sister Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who come home after school and find their father dead on the bathroom floor. Piper is legally blind (she can see shapes and light, and that’s about it) and the protective Andy is months shy of his 18th birthday, ineligible to get custody. Complicating matters, there are documented incidents of violence in Andy’s past. Initially, child services wants to split the two up, but a saving grace comes in the form of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former child services worker who lost her daughter in a recent drowning accident and is caretaking for another foster child, a mute 10-year-old by the name of Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).
As the sibs settle in at Laura’s remote bungalow, there’s hope in the air, but something’s clearly off. Laura’s chatty and welcoming, but also controlling, spouting out a litany of rules and regs between awkward hugs. Piper is given the daughter’s room – which, bathed in pink and bejeweled with beads, has been maintained like a shrine – while Andy is relegated to a utility closet of sorts that has barely enough room for his mattress and a workout bench. The first real tell comes when we meet Oliver, a lithe androgynous sort with a faraway look in his eyes, standing shirtless and barefoot at the bottom of the drained pool out back, holding the cat that’s “not to be let out of the house” like he’s about to break its neck. Damien, the kid from “The Omen” (1976), has nothing on Oliver. And there are those strange red marks under his eyes; hard to tell if they’re birthmarks or the result of some occult ritual.
As in “Talk to Me,” rituals, paranormal mysticism and struggles with grief are at the fore of “Bring Her Back.” Late at night, Laura watches grainy VHS tapes that have darker, more sinister snuff content than the ones in David Cronenberg’s “Videodrome” (1983), if that’s possible. There’s also something to do with the concentric lines of lye surrounding the complex, the rising water level in the pool and the mystery of what’s in the double-locked toolshed. Add to that the fact that the “Her” of the title is Laura’s daughter – something we learn early on – and you don’t need a map to see where this is going. If that sounds like a bit of a spoiler, don’t sweat it; the Philippous are more interested in curating a visceral shifting experience that will have you watching through parted fingers, something they prove deft at time and time again. Everything about Laura’s movements at night – those tapes, the spiking of Andy’s protein shakes, her peeing into a vinegar bottle – are small, eerie moments that add to a slowly rising wave of terror that crests when Laura’s motives become clear and a bloated Oliver seems on the verge of exploding from the inside out.
The ever-reliable Hawkins, so good in everything she does (“Blue Jasmine,” “Happy Go Lucky” and “The Shape of Water,” to name a few), holds the film’s rudder fast with her ability to convey compassionate nurturing and dark-hearted, devious malevolence all at once. Barratt is dutiful and vulnerable as the concerned big brother, but the film belongs to Phillips and Wong, who renders Piper as a strong yet trusting teen, who, like that cat, feels exposed and vulnerable in nearly every scene. The Philippous drop us into Piper’s blurry POV occasionally to let us know just how at risk she is.
Beyond those unsettling VHS tapes, what makes “Bring Her Back” so disturbing is the steady, preternatural transformation of Oliver from skinny, frail boy to something else. Being so young a performer, Phillips doesn’t have a lot to his credit as of yet, but much more is asked of him here than, say, Harvey Stephens as Damien in “The Omen,” and, aided by some grim and gruesome sleight of hand by the Philippous, he delivers with chilling aplomb. Stephens’ career was pretty much a one-and-done; I suspect Phillips is just getting warmed up.
Given how the Philippous title their films, you could see future projects such as “Get Him Out,” “Listen to Us” or “Let Them In” – simple titles deployed as cinematic beards for chilling wake-in-fright devices. Once your stomach settles and you take a step back, there are several logistical turns and pat plot developments you could question, but it’s not worth the time or effort. “Bring Her Back” gets so thoroughly under your skin that its effect is physical. I’d have to go back to Claire Denis’ “Trouble Every Day” (2001) to find a chiller that so completely creeped me out that my mouth was dry and my blood ran cold for hours after the credits rolled.
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