Are Danny and Michael Philippou the new kings of horror? Well, they may be the new princes or the new marquesses of horror anyway; I can’t think of anyone who outranks them. The Philippou brothers grabbed audiences by the throat with their debut Talk to Me, and now they’re back with a macabre new adventure set on their home turf of suburban Adelaide in South Australia. It takes place in a bizarre house with a triangular empty swimming pool destined to be filled with rainwater as the film’s bad weather continues into the horrible finale.
Bring Her Back gives a great villainous role to Sally Hawkins and a terrifically smart debut for non-professional teen Sora Wong. It’s a horror preying with hideous expertise on our protective instincts towards the vulnerable, our fear of our own vulnerability, the shame and guilt of abuse, and survivors’ wretched sense of loyalty to their abusers. And the theme of blindness and visual impairment might even call to mind the unreconstructed attitudes of movies such as Wait Until Dark and Don’t Look Now.
Andy (Billy Barratt) and his partially sighted stepsister Piper (Wong) are orphaned when their cruel widower father dies of some kind of seizure in the shower. They are fostered by an odd woman called Laura, played by Hawkins, who is grieving the loss of her own (blind) daughter and already looking after a disturbed boy called Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). She is creepily matey, always yelping and chirruping with forced laughter and misjudged jokes, a mask of mumsiness which slips when Andy reveals that on his 18th birthday he intends to apply for parental custody of Piper and they will move away.
But his ability to do this will depend on a reference from Laura, who begins a campaign to undermine him and subtly terrorise Piper. In private, she likes to watch a certain VHS videotape – a relic whose antique oddity is endowed with something uncanny – which she has perhaps purchased from the dark web; a tape showing a group of Russian-speakers who have unusual ideas about how to deal with grief and loss … ideas that Laura wants to put into practice.
The Philippou brothers have a diabolical talent, not just for the jump scare but the slo-mo cringe-scare, the squirm-scare and the writhe-in-your-seat scare. It is brought to the fore in a grisly scene in which Laura insists on coming to the funeral of Piper and Andy’s father and impresses on Andy the need to carry out certain healing traditions and observances towards the dead of which he was (understandably) unaware. The whole thing is underscored by barnstorming performances from Wong and Hawkins.
• Bring Her Back is in UK and Irish cinemas from 1 August.
