BRING HER BACK is this year’s release from Danny and Michael Philippou, the Australian twins “known for their horror comedy YouTube videos” according to Wikipedia, but I know them for the 2023 ghost movie TALK TO ME, which I enjoyed. The brothers both direct while Danny writes with Bill Hinzman (no, not the cemetery zombie from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD – I looked it up, and he died in 2012). This is another impressive Philippou Brothers joint, more serious than the last, not much humor this time, but just the right level of bleakness for me.

It’s about a half brother and sister who are having a rough go of it. Piper (newcomer Sora Wong) is blind, but tries to go without her cane to fit in at school, which doesn’t work. Andy (Billy Barratt, “Street urchin,” MARY POPPINS RETURNS) is older, seems to have been a mess since the death of their mother, but he’s very loving and protective of Piper. Then they come home and find their dad dead in the shower. This may be a dumb thing to note but I think it’s important that he’s just laying there with his junk visible, because for all our lives most movies have lived in a world designed to avoid the sight of dicks. Seeing one here adds a blunt reality that makes the death more matter of fact, and more shocking.

Social services want to separate the orphan half-siblings, but their pleading earns them a special arrangement: they can can go to the same place if Andy can be good for three months until he turns 18 and applies to become Piper’s guardian. They meet the foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins, I FUCKED A FISH MAN I STOLE FROM WORK), an eccentric goof who seems friendly and excited about Piper while only half-heartedly acknowledging Andy’s presence and blocking his head out of a selfie they take together.

Andy is impressed that Laura seems to have prepped the house for Piper’s safety, but she says it was already like that because she had a blind daughter who died. Did I mention this is a horror movie? I feel like that “you remind me of my daughter who recently died” detail might turn out to be significant. Just a hunch.

Then they find out they have a new brother. Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) is a weird little dude who doesn’t speak, hangs out in the empty pool and manhandles the cat like he’s gonna eat it. Laura acts very strange about the whole situation, and I think keeps him in a storage shed?Which I don’t think is kosher. He reminds me of the kid in SPEAK NO EVIL. Not a good sign. Other bad signs: at the funeral for their dad, Laura steals a lock of hair and also pressures Andy to kiss the corpse on the lips.

Yeah, this is one creepy-ass kid…

…but the movie lives or dies (in my opinion lives) on the performance of Hawkins as this very messy, layered weirdo character. She’s a complex ball of quirky qualities that can be kinda cute but we gotta assume are a front or an unrepresentative side of a dangerous person. There’s definitely some Annie Wilkes in her. An interesting scene is early on when she bitterly reveals that she’s seen some of Andy’s texts joking around with his girlfriend about her. She has flagrantly violated his privacy but also he didn’t mean it that way and seems to feel bad about it. The real discomfort is when he tries to grab his phone back from her, there’s a bit of a struggle and though he stops himself it’s clear that he’s much bigger than her and she looks scared of him. I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for her, but also you wonder how much she wants something like this as a way to get rid of him.

This is a supernatural movie – there’s a backstory about a cult, an attempt at resurrection (apparently somebody never saw PET SEMATARY), salt lines that can’t be crossed, and some imaginatively disturbing imagery. (IMAGINATIVELY DISTURBING IMAGERY SPOILER: That’s messed up when Oliver starts munching on a knife, but I especially love when he chews on the counter. Takes a bite right out of it.) I’m glad it goes there but for me it works not as much due to any type of spookablastery as on the strength of these very grounded and human characters. In particular (SPOILER) there’s a part where Andy convinces their social worker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton, THE VERY EXCELLENT MR. DUNDEE) to come see what’s going on at the house, but she’s known Laura for years and seems inclined to believe her… then Laura falls apart anyway, basically gives up the whole game trying to appeal to Wendy to understand. That’s when I realized yes, she’s unhinged, but mostly because losing her kid broke her. There’s nothing to heal that wound, but she’ll do anything to try. She’s gone kid simple.

(I’m sure she would’ve done the same for Paddington had he died and had Emily Mortimer not taken over her character in part IN PERU.)

So yes, BRING HER BACK is release by A24 and is modern horror movie number four thousand sixty seven that’s about grief. Both factions are dealing with it, but only one does it using demons and murders, which is unethical. Everybody’s sad and then everything goes ape shit. I liked this one. Thank you Australia.