Bring Her Back - The scoop and digest

The Philippous' second feature is again written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman.

Sally Hawkins - Laura

Billy Barratt - Andy

Sora Wong - Piper

Jonah Wren Phillips - Oliver

Sally-Anne Upton - Wendy

Summary

After finding their father Phil dead on the bathroom floor, Andy and his visually-impaired sister Piper are sent to stay with their eccentric foster mother Laura and her son Oliver, who suffers from selective mutism.

It's quickly revealed that Laura's daughter Cathy drowned in the backyard pool.

At the funeral, Laura secretly takes a lock of Phil's hair.

That night, a drunk Andy tells Laura about how Phil physically abused him and resented how he loved Piper more.

Suffice to say, events turn darker than an eclipse.

Grief and gore

While failing to match the quality of Talk to Me, slow burning gut punch proves brothers aren't one-trick ponies.

Performances are solid as rocks, particularly by Hawkins and Wren Phillips.  Props also goes to Sora Wong, especially since she had no previous acting experience.

Aaron McLisky's sleek cinematography savours every brutal encounter and Oliver biting down hard on a carving knife is gloriously gruesome.

As demonstrated by cultists in VHS tapes, resurrection ritual requires a demon-possessed vessel to feast on a corpse and vomit remains into a freshly killed body that died the same way.

Or put another way:

"Consume the old body. Purge soul into new body."

At a police station, Andy clocks 'Oliver' on a missing person poster, who is actually 10-year-old Connor Bird, who Laura obviously kidnapped.

Andy breaks into a shed and finds Connor eating Cathy's frozen corpse preserved in a freezer.

To cut a long story short, ritual stops mid-possession, when Piper says "Mum!".

This echoes Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), when Kal-El gasps "Save Martha!"

Seeing his poster, Connor crosses the boundary and collapses as the demon leaves his body.

Beyond Laura taking Cathy from freezer, she cradles body inside the pool as the police arrive.

It's a satisfying ending, and we cannot help but feel bad for her.

For all the positives, practical effects smack heavily of Evil Dead, as did self-mutilation.

Multiple questions are left unanswered, namely the origins of unnamed cult and circumstances leading to Laura getting tapes.

Dedicated to Harley Wallace

2001-2024

The passing of directors close family friend at the start of pre-production rocked Michael's world and altered the way some scenes played out too.