Bring Her Back

Bluesky

Directing duo Danny and Michael Philippou have already demonstrated acute understanding of adolescence and how the boundaries of childhood and adulthood have parallels in the thresholds of birth and death. With co-writer Bill Hinzman, Talk To Me was a stunning début and Bring Her Back is an excellent continuation.

Consistent in unease, it is, like The Babadook before it, a depiction of grief gone wrong. Wrong enough that it becomes something else, unpicks and modifies the relationships before the loss into something uncanny, a reflection in a two-way mirror.

It's borne by some really strong performances, Billy Barratt and Sora Wang as adoptive brother and sister Andy and Piper, orphaned by successive and certainly sad circumstance. They'll be taken in, not alone, by Sally Hawkins' Laura, looked after in a sprawling house that's an island of timber and glass in a deep and lush forest. They're not alone, watched by and watching out for Oliver. Jonah Wren Philips has an intensity to his performance that is most approachably described as haunting, finding a way to be seen to be seeing in a film that delights in devilish detail.

The age rating of 18 is well deserved. 'Strong bloody violence and 'injury detail' barely cover the skin crawling discomfort that comes from acts that really allow the cast to get their teeth into proceedings. Those aren't the whole of it either, warnings about its content should include not just those but depictions of abusive relationships. There's so much going on that I found myself considering a sequel based in the subsequent judicial and criminal inquiries. Safeguarding reports don't usually have to mention ritual circles, it's rare for paladins to swap their white chargers for four-doored hatchbacks.

Hawkins is magnetic. Almost at the level of physics, attracting opposites and repelling the alike, distorting perception around her. If the film has a weakness it's one shared by any number of other films by allowing unease from uncertainty to condense into cliché. Opening with a videotape, the flicker of that pre-digital process is part of a set of layers between events and their precursors. Motivation becomes clear quite early, but it's in means and opportunity that later surprises lurk.

'A24 horror' isn't quite a genre yet, but with works like Men and Heretic and Hereditary, Bring Her Back is variously in good company. The strength of its cast as an ensemble is in their inter-relationships. Barratt and Wong have tremendous chemistry, Andy hopes to be a guardian for Piper who is visually impaired but the authorities won't grant that power lightly. Heretic was in part an exploration of control and Bring Her Back is about the ways that power seeks not only to confine, but to preserve, and to restore.

Composer Cornel Wilczek has worked with the brothers Philippou before, and the structure of the music he provides is as crisp as their film. While there's one or two conventional jump scares there are other juxtapositions that are even more unsettling. Aaron McLisky's cinematography is another highlight, he lensed the brilliant series Mr Inbetween that conjures astonishing thrills from the work of The Magician. The design of the film is nearly perfect, and the makeup and other special effects are as impactful as they are credible.

The recurring presence of water, the use of flashbacks, and the consistency of execution are reminiscent of any quantity of J- or K- horror, and some of that may be the influence of the Pacific or the universality of struggles within and between selves. Some of that's also down to talent, the titles that you're probably thinking of when I make those references are award-winning and export-strength. Bring Her Back is a sign that the Philippous can recreate the magic of their first film, and that's powerful stuff. They are helped by their cast, but even the meatiest of hams needs someone to put scenery out for them to chew. The quality of their setting brings out the best. As The Menu demonstrated, good ingredients are made something special in presentation.

Bring Her Back is, as its title suggests, rooted in an attempt to recreate and restore. That those behind the camera have done the same in terms of quality and creativity is a testament to their ability. A strong cast put flesh on the bones of strong ideas, but ultimately what animates it all is imagination. It's here in spades, enough that whatever they do next will be worth digging out.

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