By Michael Kalafatis
Bring Her Back is available to watch on Apple TV+.
★★★★☆
“I’ve spoken with an angel. It showed me how I can be a mother again.”
When two step-siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) find their father dead in the shower, they are sent to live with Laura (Sally Hawkins) a former councillor who also fosters a mute boy named Oliver. Andy is unnerved by Laura and Oliver’s eccentric behaviour and does not realise he is part of an occult ritual orchestrated by their new foster mum.
Bring Her Back is the second directorial effort by the twin filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou, whose first film Talk to Me (2022) was very well received by critics and a box office hit. Bring Her Back is a much slower and atmospheric film, unlike Philippou’s first film, it features fewer frightening moments, but it manages to convey an eerie and apprehensive atmosphere that makes for a difficult watch.
Bring Her Back is a very effective film in both horror and drama genres because it depicts realist characters who have gone through trauma, loss, guilt, and grief. Grief and guilt are the main themes that are most explored, their realistic depiction makes the occult elements more effective as they become more prominent with progression of the narrative
The pacing of the Philippou’s film is very effective in creating a very uncomfortable watching experience rather than scary. It starts in a very subdue way (except the death of the two sibling’s father), and from then on it steadily builds up an eerie atmosphere that does not pause until the credits roll. But at the heart of the film, just like most good horror films, there are characters who suffer devastating tragedies and their interactions with the occult elements reveal their resolve and true nature.
The acting is a very strong component of what makes the film more believable, and the situations that the characters go through requires a lot from the actors. Sally Hawkins and Billy Barratt both manage to create characters who have been traumatised by loss and grief, but Sora Wong is the one who steals the show. She makes Bring Her Back more frightening and unsettling because she is the one who we relate and worry about the most. We are more concerned about Wong’s character, not just because she is brilliantly acted, but because she is occasionally filmed in point of view shots, simulating the way she sees the world (she is partially blind, she can only see shapes but cannot see things or people clearly). The brothers Philippou achieve this by having Wong in foreground with her background being out of focus, an idea that creates a lot of tense scenes that lack jump scares but are very unsettling.
Bring Her Back is very similar to Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018), both films are more concerned in creating believable characters than just showing scary moments because their directors want to create a more realistic world before they introduce the occult elements that will mostly dominate the latter part of the narrative. Both films explore mainly the themes of loss and guilt, that leads to the unravelling of the main characters in a very unsettling and sometimes gruesome way.