Bring Her Back
After suffering a traumatic loss, vision-impaired Piper (Sora Wong) and her older, protective brother Andy (Billy Barratt) enter foster care in the secluded home of child care worker Laura (Sally Hawkins, "Happy-Go-Lucky," "Paddington") who has recently lost her own daughter Cathy (Mischa Heywood). There they will wonder about her other charge, the orphaned Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) who appears to be wasting away, but when Andy discovers the truth about his strange behavior, Laura has already set the stage for his downfall so she can "Bring Her Back."
Laura's Review: C
Did Sally Hawkins abandon the third Paddington movie to appear in this? While her formidable talent is on display as she disappears into a character driven mad with grief, "Bring Her Back" an off-putting twist on the Monkey's Paw that leans hard into child abuse and gross-outs in lieu of genuine scares. Writer/directors Danny and Michael Philippou ("Talk To Me") appear to be going for shock value, opening with grainy footage of what appears to be an Eastern European snuff film parading as some kind of bizarre soul transferring ritual. 'This is not a cult,' we are told, but as with their prior film, they never provide the world building to justify their narrative, nor any logical explanation for a third act reveal.
The Philippous sprinkle breadcrumbs early on with Andy and Piper's differing reactions to finding their father dead on the shower floor and Andy's 'problematic past' noted by Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) in Child Services when she initially proposes splitting the two up. Seventeen year-old Andy makes it clear that they need to stay together and that he intends to apply for Piper's guardianship when he turns eighteen in a few months. Laura agrees to take them both, but her wildly enthusiastic reception is notably focused far more on Piper, who is given Cathy's bedroom while Andy, whose name she can't get straight, is housed in a junk room with a folding door that won't lock. When Laura blatantly tries to go through Andy's phone, she overreacts to his justifiable grab for it, as if he's about to hit her (he isn't), later taking the upper hand by having seen his text labeling Oliver 'a weirdo.' There is an agenda here.
Laura's behavior is wildly inappropriate from the get-go, shocking both Piper and Andy with her use of the 'F' word, which, of course, both of them find delightful. Her 'introduction' of her dog to Piper is a signifier of her inability to let things go, the dog revealed to be stuffed. Then she begins to hint at 'helping' Andy, like insisting he kiss his father's corpse at his funeral (after clandestinely snipping off some of the man's hair). Afterwards she suggests that funerals should be celebrations, saying they do something fun. When Andy says he'd like to get smashed, she obliges, bringing out whiskey shots for all three of them, allowing Piper to drink until she passes out and Andy to tell the truth about his abusive father, something he's hidden from Piper, his dad's favored child. When Laura takes Piper out for a girls shopping trip, Andy finds Oliver locked up and offers the boy food if the uncommunicative boy will write something down, but after the skinny child with a shaved head and increasingly blood engorged eyes scribbles 'Bird,' what he does next is the type of thing most will hide their eyes from. And it gets far worse.
We can guess at some of what's going on, the ritual Laura is preparing for hinted at in that grainy video we see her watching and the circles which are everywhere, but her possession of an essential ingredient makes no sense and is never explained. Andy's attempt to get Wendy's help is akin to every policeman who arrives promising hope only to be slaughtered, a well worn horror trope. Yes, Hawkins' behavior is scary, but the movie really isn't, instead reveling in bloody, self mutilation and endangered children. "Bring Her Back" has been well crafted by its production designer, cinematographer, editor, composer, sound and costume designer, nor can the cast be faulted, Wong, Barratt and Phillips also very effective, but the Philippous use extremism and gore to distract us from noticing that we've seen this done before with far more clarity and far less sensationalism.
A24 releases "Bring Her Back" in theaters on 5/30/24.
