Bring Her Back Spoiler Review – Is This the Continuous Rise of Horror?

Is the duo behind Talk to Her able to Bring Her Back?

With their 2022 debut feature and horror phenomenon A24‘s Talk to Me, filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou established themselves as some of the most exciting new voices in genre filmmaking. Where that movie, in which teenagers chase the high of conjuring spirits to possess them at house parties, was partly inspired by the recklessness they’d experienced as high school students, it was grounded, and elevated, by a very real sense of consequences.

So, when it came to Bring Her Back, it was imperative the duo created a story with a strong emotional core, that captures a multitude of emotions that doesn’t focus on scaring the audience but embraces the true definition of the horror genre. As a result, Bring Her Back’s goal was to combine horror, dark emotional undercurrents, and surprising comedy to maximum effect — putting real, relatable characters through the ringer to reach something more effective and far more memorable in the end.

Inspired by the wave of Korean genre films of the 2000s, notably Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder, as amateur director was able to place queasy humor, slapstick, and the long emotional tail of trauma at the core of a film about the fundamentally unknowable mind of a serial killer.

Now, two years after their breakout film, the Philippou’s follow-up is Bring Her Back, returning the writing-directing duo to an excavation of the horrors of suburban family life that is heightened by the deepest emotional shocks and gnarliest gore of any genre film in recent memory. But it began with a much softer, more innocent inspiration involving the directors’ friend’s little sister being non-sighted and just wanting to go and catch the bus by herself, but her parents wouldn’t let her do it. She was trying to communicate with them that she’s going to have to learn to navigate the world without everyone babying her all the time, that she needs to have her own independence.

That thematic core, of a teenage girl making her first steps towards independence, would manifest in the story of Piper (Sora Wong), who is blind, shielded from the darkness of life by her protective older brother, Andy (Billy Barratt). Andy tends to paint the world in rose-colored hues for Piper, sheltering her from its worst because he can’t bear to share a world that is so ugly with his little sister. But after the two siblings experience a tragedy and its unavoidable horror, they are flung into far more unthinkable circumstances.

Piper and Andy land under the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a child-care worker and counselor living in a secluded home with the orphaned, and increasingly troubled, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). As brother and sister slowly unravel the horrible truth behind Oliver’s disturbing behavior, his deteriorating appearance, and a mysterious empty swimming pool at the center of Laura’s property, the Philippous methodically reveal the internal underworld of their tale, through snippets of horrific found footage and the dawning realization of their new circumstances.

While Talk to Me feels like a party horror film, but this film is more character driven, Bring Her Back proposes the challenge of a contained story about these three characters, focusing on their relationships. The characters in these films are not necessarily bad people to begin with, but the world is bad, and bad things have happened to them, and they’ve internalized everything, there are characters you uncomfortably sympathize or identify with.

In The Koalition’s latest episode of MovieCast, our Editor-In-Chief and Entertainment Editor discuss their thoughts on Bring Her Back, the horror genre, the themes of the movie and whether is an excellent follow-up to Talk To Me. Check out the video above to hear their thoughts.