Horror Twins Danny & Michael Philippou On The Evil That Lies Beneath In Their Latest ‘Bring Her Back'
What evil lies in down and under?
Surely a place filled with kangaroos and Men at Work can't be all this sinister. And the most unsuspecting duo of the deepest abyss of horror are Sundance Film Festival wunderkinds-turned-genre meisters, twin brother filmmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou. They're so vivacious and jolly, you'd never think they could conjure the grossest and most look-away moments in recent horror cinema. These guys make Ari Aster's Midsommar look like a PG version of Alice in Wonderland.
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A24 acquired the duo's possessed teens movie Talk to Me for high-seven figures out of a raucous midnight screening at Sundance in 2023, with that title going on to gross a great $48 million-plus stateside and nearly $92M worldwide.
What's their secret? More than a child eating his own skin (which you'll see this Friday in their latest, Bring Her Back), it's the duo's talent for creating deep, sympathetic and resonant characters. Bring Her Back follows two foster siblings, a young girl Piper who is visually impaired (a sublime turn by newcomer Sora Wong) and her older brother Andy (Billy Barratt, also great). With their parents gone from this world, Andy wants oversee of Piper, but the system won't allow it. They're put into the care of an older single woman, Laura (two-time Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins), who already has supervision (should we even say that?) over a young boy, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). However, he's torturing himself severely, and well, there's a pool. What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong with this woman? Well, you've got to see the movie to find out what happens.
Listen to our convo below with the Philippous and their inspirations, one of them being the 1967 Audrey Hepburn thriller Wait Until Dark in which the actress played a visually impaired woman terrorized by thugs in her apartment.
There's a lotta horror in the marketplace, but when it's great, there's no cannibalization as we recently saw with both Sinners ($258.8M) and Final Destination Bloodlines ($94.1M and counting). Perhaps Bring Her Back will continue to bring horror cinephiles back to the multiplexes.
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