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Irish Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bring Her Back review: Sally Hawkins weaponises her Paddington-mom screen persona in this gorily audacious horror
Bring Her Back Director : Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou Cert : 16 Genre : Horror Starring : Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally Hawkins Running Time : 1 hr 43 mins Not too far into Bring Her Back, the latest iteration of the A24 'grief is the real horror' subgenre, a recently orphaned 17-year-old, Andy (Billy Barratt, leading an excellent youth cast), slices a triangle of melon for his damaged, mute foster brother, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). The film's directors, the brothers Danny and Michael Philippou , cleverly cut away from the younger, leaving the viewer to savour the sound of breaking teeth. It's the first of several self-harm-themed Grand Guignol spectacles in a film that's strewn with gristle but is curiously short of starts and frights. The energetic chaos of the film-makers' breakout hit gives way to something more restrained, not necessarily more profound. Bring Her Back opens with promise: Sally Hawkins plays Laura, an eccentric foster mother who welcomes two grieving siblings – Andy and the visually impaired Piper (Sora Wong) – into her chintzy home on the edge of nowhere. READ MORE What begins as a twisted riff on Hansel and Gretel spirals into a grisly meditation on trauma, punctuated by unsettling dark-web videos, gaslighting and a supernatural ritual that is never satisfactorily explained. Hawkins is the film's greatest asset, weaponising her gentle, whimsical Paddington-mom screen persona to discombobulating effect. Her Laura is motherly, dotty and menacing, coaxing Piper with sweet nothings while psychologically tormenting Andy. The house, littered with relics from Laura's past and VHS tapes of a long-dead daughter, becomes a mausoleum of psychic distress. The Philippous lean heavily on body horror to drive the story's emotional beats, finding novel, sickening uses for kitchen utensils along the way. For all this gory audacity, the film falters when it tries to articulate its emotional core or its plot mechanics. Third-act revelations are head-scratching. The exploration of trauma and parenthood – especially Andy's memories of abuse and Laura's grief-fuelled delusion – can feel tacked on. Piper's impairment is treated with care, especially through immersive visual techniques; however, she often functions more as a plot device than a fully developed character. No matter: the Philippous can still freak you out with flair.
Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Don't ask what Sally Hawkins keeps in the freezer
There are the horror movies that make you jump out of your skin and there are the horror movies that get under your skin and stay there. The Australian film-making brothers Danny and Michael Philippou were responsible for the extremely well-made Talk to Me (2023) — a séance-gone-awry shocker full of horrifying images of self-harm and the squelchiest sound design of any film in recent memory. You couldn't look away from the screen because then it was somehow worse. Now they are back with something similar — Bring Her Back is a tale of grief and dread with horrifying images of self-harm and squelchy sound design — all wrapped around a modern-day version of Hansel and Gretel. The witch of the story is a former child counsellor named Laura (Sally Hawkins) who lives in a cabin in the woods. Decorated in cheerful, hippy-dippy colours, it has a taxidermied dog, a mysterious chalk circle and an empty swimming pool in which Laura lost her daughter to drowning. Now she keeps a little feral boy (Jonah Wren Phillips), shaven-headed and mute, locked in a room. You don't want to know what she keeps in the freezer. All this would surely constitute enough red flags to set any foster agency on high alert (has nobody learnt the lesson from Psycho about taxidermied animals?), but the film's secret weapon is Hawkins, from Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky and Paddington. Dressed in reassuring knits, she rabbits away in a stream-of-consciousness fashion that pushes her flaky persona to the edge of unsettling and cloaks her trespasses with a chipper smile. The latest unsuspecting adoptees to come under her care are 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger, partially sighted sister, Piper (Sora Wong), who have been assigned to Laura after the death of their father. Everyone seems to be grieving somebody. As with Talk to Me, you're not sure whether you're in for a horrorfest or a counselling marathon. What we get is a mix of the two — a marathon of gaslighting — as Andy smells a rat and Laura does everything she can to turn his sister against him. • The best films of 2025 so far Disappointingly, the film is far more interested in Andy than Piper, who is exploited for traditional blind-girl-in-peril frights. The idea that she is slower than her brother to notice Laura's evil vibe is unimaginative to say the least: wouldn't her sixth sense be more developed? I would have loved to have seen a film from her point of view, blur and all. True, she cannot see the grainy snatches of video that Laura has on repeat in her living room that tip us off to the horrifying ritual to come. You want to look away and you don't dare because, as with Talk to Me, the greatest shocks are delivered by the sound engineer Emma Bortignon's sound mix, one that goes way beyond the stabbed watermelons of countless horror films. Get ready to be excruciated by the sound of kitchen knife on gums, and teeth on splintering wood. You cannot say you haven't been warned.★★★★☆18, 104min August will go down as the month Pedro Pascal earned his movie star spurs. He's in three films this summer, starting with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Matt Shakman's reboot of the Marvel comic book, in which Pascal plays Reed Richards, the elasticated superhero at the head of a family of superheroes, including Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), who has a baby on the way. Can they juggle saving the world with childcare? Will the baby also be superpowered? Will they need extra-strong diapers? Does this set-up sound the teensiest bit familiar? Set in a retro 1960s world of chrome and neon, Fantastic Four: First Steps is probably best thought of as an intermittently entertaining live-action remake of Brad Bird's 2004 classic, The Incredibles. (Shakman even nabbed Michael Giacchino for the score.) The film is at its best in the first 20 minutes when it introduces everyone — with the Human Torch, Johnny Storm, coming in handy during a power cut, and Sue Storm making herself invisible to provide her own ultrasound. Her greatest trick, though — probably the film's best moment — is giving birth in zero gravity while escaping the pull of a black hole, which makes the real-time childbirth that Kirby enacted for Pieces of a Woman (2020) look like a walk in the park. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews But oh dear, the plot, which follows the time-honoured Marvel two-step: introduce the villain, then kill time for two hours waiting for him to arrive and play wrecking ball with New York. The villain is a lumbering galactic deity named Galactus (Ralph Ineson), who plans to destroy Earth unless the four hand over little baby Franklin. As a plot idea this is something of a nonstarter, involving a lot of tedious wrangling from which no one — not the Fantastic Four, nor the people of Earth demanding the baby's sacrifice — comes out looking good. The climactic bout is a ferocious yawn. Once you've seen one skyscraper crumble like cake, you've seen them all.★★★☆☆12A, 95min Times+ members can enjoy two-for-one cinema tickets at Everyman each Wednesday. Visit to find out moreWhich films have you enjoyed at the cinema recently? Let us know in the comments below and follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
Telegraph
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
This is one of the most disturbing horror films I've seen in years
Bring Her Back offers cult rituals and Sally Hawkins plotting in cable-knit cardigans: it's hard to decide which is freakier. This Australian indie horror is strong meat – it takes quite a lot these days to earn an 18 certificate with 'injury detail' – and often batteringly violent. It's the opposite of a gateway horror for the trepidatious. It beckons in the brave. The directors, Danny and Michael Philippou, got famous with stunt videos on YouTube before their hit debut Talk to Me (2022) – the one with an embalmed hand as a spirit-conjuring device, ruining lives. You look at the characters in Bring Her Back, which is possibly even bleaker, and worry if a single one will make it out alive. Teenage siblings Andy (a mightily promising Briton, Billy Barratt, who won awards for the 2019 BBC drama Responsible Child) and his younger sister Piper (partially sighted newcomer Sora Wong, also amazing) are orphaned at the start, when they find their ailing father dead in their bathroom. The social services pair Piper with a foster mother called Laura (Hawkins, garishly dressed even at the funeral, and unnervingly overfamiliar). Laura is grieving after her own blind daughter drowned in their weird, triangular swimming pool. Andy refuses to be separated from his sister and moves in, too. It's instantly clear Laura wants rid of this third wheel – the only question is how. We learn to trust nothing she says or does. Another alleged child of hers called Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) prowls around the garden mutely, a feral urchin who keeps breaking his teeth on things and molesting the cat. He also tries to eat a kitchen knife, which doesn't go well and is impressively hard to watch. Whatever Laura has put in him – we know there's black magic afoot, from scratchy camcorder footage of occult rites – seems as diseased as it is demonic. The horror DNA here is a three-fold splicing of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, Ari Aster's Hereditary and Kate Hudson's chiller The Skeleton Key, a slice of supernatural body-swap hokum for which I have a real soft spot. Bring Her Back could have done with a twist or two, like that had, but this isn't to say it doesn't inflict shocks: there's no safe ground here once we grasp the resurrection agenda, and how single-mindedly Laura's devoted to it. Hawkins deepens tremendously. She makes this person comically dreadful, then manipulative, then dangerous; but what's waiting in the role is an abyss of desolation she really commits to. Laura's a villain who has brainwashed herself into thinking she's the heroine. That's genuinely tragic. The ways she tricks Piper into distrusting her brother are pure Iago tactics – it's a wrench to watch them paying off. All three of the young actors give a lot, too. You could get PTSD from the rain-drenched, howlingly sad Bring Her Back just as a viewer. It would be nice to hear the cast were treated to a relaxing beach holiday afterwards.
Geek Vibes Nation
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
A24 To Release The Disturbing Horror Film 'Bring Her Back' On 4K UHD Blu-Ray This August
A24 has just announced that they will be releasing the gruesome horror film Bring Her Back from directors Danny and Michael Philippou in a special Blu-Ray and 4K UHD Collector's Edition that will begin shipping in August 2025, exclusively from the A24 Shop. The film stars Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips, Mischa Heywood, and Sally Hawkins. Special features include a commentary with the directors, one deleted scene, and an in-depth making-of featurette, plus six collectible postcards with behind the scenes photography by Ingvar Kenne. Get more details below! Synopsis: A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother. Special features: Director Commentary with Danny & Michael Philippou Deleted Scene 'Coming Full Circle: Making Bring Her Back' Featurette Six Collectible Postcards with Behind the Scenes Photography This is the latest of many Collector's Editions from A24. Which of their films would you like to see get this treatment next? Let us know in the comments or over on Twitter.
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Horror Thriller ‘Bring Her Back' New On Streaming This Week, Report Says
Jonah Wren Phillips in "Brink Her Back." The acclaimed A24 horror thriller Bring Her Back — starring The Shape of Water Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins — is reportedly coming to digital streaming this week. Directed by Talk to Me helmers Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, Bring Her Back opened in theaters on May 30. The official logline for Bring Her Back reads, 'A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.' In addition to Hawkins, Bring Her Back also stars Billy Barratt, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips, Sora Wong and Liam Damons. Bring Her Back won the acclaim of Rotten Tomatoes critics, who gave the film an 89% 'fresh' rating based on 184 reviews. Audiences gave the film a 79% 'fresh' score on RT's Popcornmeter based on 1,000-plus reviews. Bring Her Back is expected to be released on Tuesday, July 1, When to Stream reported. While When to Stream is typically accurate with its PVOD reports, it noted that Bring Her Back's studio has not announced or confirmed the release of the film on digital streaming and it is subject to change. Once Bring Her Back debuts on PVOD, it will be available for purchase for $24.99 on such platforms as Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Prime Video and YouTube. Since PVOD rental prices tend to run $5 less than purchase prices, viewers can expect to rent Bring Her Back for $19.99 for a 48-hour period. Why The Directors Behind 'Bring Her Back' Call It A 'Personal' Film Even though it's a horror movie, directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou — who are identical twins — told Salon in an interview in early June that Bring Her Back is a personal film to them. 'Horror — not just horror, any sort of art — when you get really personal, it's a way to exorcise those demons, or to express something you can't entirely put into words,' Danny Philippou told Salon. 'So [making a film] is about drawing from those real experiences and putting them somewhere where you don't have to carry them anymore. That's just how we tackle any of the art that we're doing. 'Anything that we're writing, anything that we're making, is to put ourselves out there and express personal things,' the filmmaker added. 'It did feel like we were grieving somebody at that time, we just lost them in pre-production, and the film became about saying goodbye to them as well. The best way to make art is to be as personal as possible.' Bring Her Back is still playing in theaters and has earned $19.2 million domestically and nearly $3 million internationally for a worldwide box office gross of $22.2 million to date. Bring Her Back $17.5 million production budget before prints and advertising, per The Numbers. Rated R, Bring Her Back is expected to be released on PVOD on Tuesday.
