Directors Danny and Michael Philippou have done the unthinkable: they're YouTubers who actually made a respectable foray into cinema. Certain modern directors like David F. Sandberg or Fede Alvarez got their start with short films that got popular on YouTube, to be sure. However, the Philippou twins were explicitly YouTube stars for years under the moniker RackaRacka. The forays of Angry Video Game Nerd, Smosh, Fred, and Logan Paul (among others) into feature-length movies resulted in cinematic atrocities so awful they’ll have you pining for the joys of Movie 43.
Meanwhile, the Philippou’s scored a box office and critical hit with their 2023 feature Talk to Me. All those years of refining their craft as horror storytellers and lovers of practical effects wizardry paid off. Now they’ve returned with Bring Her Back, which sees the duo working with Mike Leigh and Guillermo del Toro veteran Sally Hawkins. Anyone expecting them to dial back their warped sensibilities for such a polished, esteemed performer is delusional. Bring Her Back is much more Hershel Gordon Lewis and 80s Peter Jackson than anything else.
Piper (Sora Wong) and Anthony (Billy Barratt) only have each other. That's their reality once they come home one day and find their father dead on the floor after a shower. Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman's script then has the pair arriving at their new foster parent, Laura (Sally Hawkins). This is a temporary living situation, as Anthony plans to adopt Piper and raise her once he turns 18 in just a few months. But Laura is just so happy to see and take care of these two. Also under her wing is the reclusive, selectively mute Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips).
This household has problems from the start, as it’s clear Laura is a bit…off in her behavior. She’s also clearly playing favorites amongst her two new adoptees, as she isolates Anthony while showering Piper with affection. However, darker plans lurk in the shadows. Piper and Anthony aren’t the only ones who’ve lost someone in their family. Laura too is grappling with the loss of her young daughter from years earlier. When Anthony inquires how she get over it, Laura plainly responds “I never did.” Oh, how true that is and how brutally that reality soon impacts Piper and Anthony.
In eons past, esteemed dramatic actors showing up in a horror film was seen as “slumming” it. Nowadays, though, everybody's getting in on the action in a post-Get Out/The Babadook/It world. Hugh Grant, Lupita Nyong'o, Ethan Hawke, Kerry Condon, they've all shown up in recent horror films. Samuel L. Jackson even appeared in a Saw spin-off movie! Sally Hawkins taking on Bring Her Back's principal role continues this recent trend. Unsurprisingly, scoring such an esteemed veteran of Mike Leigh, Guillermo del Toro, and Pablo Larrain cinema tremendously benefits Bring Her Back in every respect.
The Philippou’s wisely have Hawkins channel her aura from past projects like Happy-Go-Lucky. When she’s first meeting Piper and Anthony, for instance, Laura’s charming if slightly realistically awkward vibes echo her endearing work in the two Paddington movies. Sequence involving Laura’s vulnerability, meanwhile, see Hawkins absolutely crushing it displaying this woman’s caked-in pain over losing her daughter. Whenever she’s talking about this deceased child, Hawkins conjures up a softness in her voice and a slight downward tilt of the head that makes it feel like Laura has become a wholly new person. It’s downright uncomfortable at times to watch this display of emotional fragility, which is entirely appropriate.
Hawkins has always mastered soft-spoken but impactful roles, including in her mute turn in Shape of Water. It’s a quality that even made her super-brief cameos in Wonka and An Education unforgettable. That talent is excellently realized here, especially as Bring Her Back’s screenplay gets more and more out of control. As extreme chaos becomes increasingly apparent in Laura’s household, Hawkins never loses control of her acting style. She keeps responding to everything around her in this naturalistic fashion, even when she’s just portraying Laura silently watching disturbing instructional VHS tapes.
Juxtaposing such raw, realistic acting with all kinds of heightened blood-soaked mayhem makes for an appropriately unnerving experience. Bring Her Back doesn’t generate those scares in a subtle fashion, but jeepers, do the Philippou’s ever commit to squirm-inducing imagery. The number one rule of American horror movies is that you can’t hurt kids. These Talk to Me veterans throw that out the window for Bring Her Back, especially with all the savage turmoil Ollie endures. One particularly memorable example of that barbarism must’ve come from the Philippou’s witnessing the Crimes of the Future kid eating that wastebasket and going “I bet we could one-up that.”
Such gnarly imagery transpires on-screen through loads of impressive practical effects. No distractingly fake CG blood here, a problem that even the otherwise delightfully macabre The Monkey suffered from. Instead, Bring Her Back is all about tangibility, including when skin is peeled off a human being’s arm. Prepare to experience an unexpected mixture of astonishment of practical effects wizardry, and churning anxiety in your stomach. However, such gloriously unhinged practical effects work is captured through more rudimentary camerawork compared to the last film these Australian auteurs delivered.
While Talk to Me’s cinematography was rife with life and gesticulations, Bring Her Back settles for standard framing. Only a handful of times (such as a slowly rotating camera for an early Laura/Ollie conversation) does the camera memorably move around or show much energy. While that quality is a downgrade from Talk to Me, Bring Her Back does unfortunately continue one key shortcoming of the Philippou’s directorial debut. These directors haven’t quite nailed the balance of effective pathos and demented carnage. Julia Ducournau, Jeremy Saulnier, Karyn Kusama, Panos Cosmatos, Ryan Coogler with Sinners, these are filmmakers who know how to balance messed-up imagery with characters audiences genuinely get wrapped up in.
The Bring Her Back players, particularly Anthony, Piper, and Ollie, function fine as vessels for blood-soaked lunacy and impressively warped practical effects carnage. However, I just never got wrapped up in them as characters. This feature goes in unexpected directions regarding what people do with knives, loose skin, or deep chest freezers. However, thematic material related to abusive parental relationships and strained sibling dynamics is infinitely less idiosyncratic. This left key third-act moments relying on the interiority of these fictional souls ringing hollow. Despite a richly human Sally Hawkins performance, Bring Her Back’s stabs at pathos needed rewrites. At least the feature’s practical effects and shock value grotesquerie are killer (no pun intended). Fellow YouTuber Cinema canon entries like Smosh: The Movie only wish they could’ve hit those creative highs.