This Year's Most Gruesome Movie Is Also One of the Best

With Talk to Me, the 2023 horror opus about a spirit-conjuring mummified hand wreaking havoc on an unlucky group of teens, Australian filmmakers (and brothers) Danny and Michael Phillipou instantly solidified their place in the ranks of the genre’s greats. Much like Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018) and David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014), to which the Phillipou’s debut owes much, Talk to Me unequivocally heralded a new Big Thing in horror cinema at a boom time for the genre. Their follow-up, Bring Her Back, which hit cinemas on May 30 and is now streaming, boasts a similar mix of occult chills and shocking violence. Is it as good as Talk to Me, or is it in a different league altogether?

Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water) stars as Laura, certainly the world’s worst foster mother, who comes into the possession (not quite “care”) of teenage Andy (an exceptional Billy Barratt) and his blind sister Piper (Sora Wong) following their father’s suicide. The siblings join Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who recently lost his parents and sister and has since refused to speak. As it happens, Laura is also grieving a recent loss. Her daughter, Cathy (Mischa Heywood), drowned in the backyard pool, which now lies drained. Laura has little interest in Andy, but she’s drawn to his sister. Cathy, Laura pointedly tells Piper, was blind, too.

As it turns out—and this is a bit of a spoiler, but it’s also given away in the trailers and, in fact, the title—Laura wants to use Piper’s body to revive Cathy’s spirit. According to the cult to which Laura subscribes, the soul lives on in the body for a short time after death. Until she can wrangle herself a foster child who suitably resembles Cathy, Laura is keeping the dead child’s spirit alive in Oliver. Cathy herself, meanwhile, lies desiccated in the tool shed.

As you can surmise, Bring Her Back is remarkably macabre and frankly grisly, and it’s rendered in an admirably straightforward fashion. There’s little humor to undercut the dread; the scenario is taken seriously rather than played for baroque camp. Talk to Me benefited from a similar approach, but it suffered from too often showing its influences. Bring Her Back feels like the work of immensely talented filmmakers who, in the wake of a well-deserved success, have now become immensely assured filmmakers.

An equal amount of credit falls to Hawkins, a consistently spectacular actor who here gives a performance that’s on par with Toni Collette in Hereditary, which has become the watermark for horror performances which really should’ve won a few awards but tragically didn't. Hawkins, who's best known for the Paddington movies and The Shape of Water but got her start collaborating with Mike Leigh in his ultra-realistic, frequently bleak domestic dramas, gives a startling against-type turn which is so heartfelt and effective that it almost undoes the movie's conceit. She imbues Laura with such empathy and desperation that you find yourself not only sympathizing with her plight but subtly hoping she succeeds. Of course, we'd never help her. But if the plan goes off, good for her. It’s an astounding piece of work, one of the best on-screen performances of the year.

As for the film itself, it’s largely exceptional. Talk to Me was greatly entertaining and possessed a real vision, but it was so indebted to other films that at times it was hard to tell if the Phillipous had the goods or were simply exceptionally able imitators. (The same debate rages on about Brian De Palma to this day.) With their second feature, the filmmakers prove to be studious disciples of horror but crucially of cinema as well. They have an innately satisfying sense of pacing and structure, infusing an old-school rhythm with dashes of modern violence and perversion which make what you’re watching seem oddly out of time and especially harrowing. Hawkins' presence is especially suitable as Bring Her Back invokes Leigh's work in both its naturalism and specific, occasionally nihilistic, worldview, though admittedly the horrors here are far more externalized.

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That’s not to say Bring Her Back is a wholly original work which will rewrite the conventions of horror forthcoming, but it does feel a far more singular creation than Talk to Me. Here, the Phillipous are particularly skilled at delivering tried-and-true genre tropes (doomed is the well-meaning social worker who makes a third-act trip to the house of horrors) whilst simultaneously sending those conventions out the window. The situations are familiar, but their outcome less so. Yet there are certain tricks on which the directors fall back that threaten to wear out their welcome. Like Talk to Me, Bring Her Back contains a toe-curling moment of demonically possessed self-mutilation—two, in fact, both of which will send you retching. Admittedly, both instances are horrifically effective and so disgustingly nasty, so positively demented, that it provokes a sense of wonderment. But one does wonder in how many more movies that card can and should be played.

Of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween director John Carpenter famously said: “It rode the knife edge of terror like no other. It pacified my soul. [After watching it,] I went home and slept like a baby. Perhaps there is no greater compliment than that.” If you’re of a similar persuasion, if you enjoy the darker side of cinema and find a particular comfort in celluloid terror, Bring Her Back will provoke that sort of reaction. It’s one of this year’s very best films, and though its more gruesome elements prevent an endorsement for squeamish viewers, it’s the type of horror movie which transcends the genre to appeal to those who would not usually plump for such a nightmarish ordeal. In fact, Bring Her Back is the best type of horror movie: one which uses the genre’s template to craft a supremely human drama about the everyday horrors which surround us.

Bring Her Back is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and other major rental platforms.

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