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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bring Her Back review – Philippou brothers bring all manner of scares to creepy custody battle
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.
Irish Times
5 hours 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.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bring Her Back review – Philippou brothers bring all manner of scares to creepy custody battle
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 in 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 with 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 fitness 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 own antique oddity is endowed with something uncanny) which she has perhaps purchased from the dark web, a tape showing a certain 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. This is brought to the fore in a grisly scene in which Laura insists on coming to the funeral of Piper and Andy's late 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.
Times
5 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
Daily Record
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Bring Her Back viewers have just made a huge realisation about the cast
The Philippou brothers' new horror hits cinemas today Bring Her Back arrives in UK cinemas today (July 26) and chronicles the grim tale of two siblings who are placed with a foster mother still mourning her own late daughter. Brother duo Danny and Michael Philippou are the masterminds behind the blockbuster, marking their second cinema outing following 2023's smash hit, Talk To Me. Their latest offering was penned simultaneously with their debut and exists within the same fictional world, though it doesn't function as a direct sequel. The ensemble features acting legend Sally Hawkins (Shape of Water) leading the charge, alongside emerging Australian talent Sora Wong and Jonah Wren Phillips (Sweet Tooth), plus Billy Barratt (Kraven the Hunter). Since the Philippou siblings hail from Australia, they habitually locate their productions Down Under and have their performers adopt the local dialect. Yet audiences are only now discovering that two of Bring Her Back's leading stars are actually British. Sally, amongst the most recognisable faces in the line-up, originates from London, whilst Billy, who portrays Andy, is also a Londoner and happens to be the grandson of Welsh musical icon Shakin' Stevens, reports the Mirror. Spectators have been utterly astounded by the duo's authentic Australian pronunciations and flocked to Reddit to express their astonishment after hearing their genuine voices during interviews. "Holy s*** she's [Sally] not Australian? I'm Aussie and she reminded me of so many teachers, social service, councillor types I've known," wrote one viewer. Another commented: "I'm Aussie and her accent was flawless. Absolutely flawless." A third viewer expressed their astonishment, saying: "Sally Hawkins I recognised eventually, never would have known if I hadn't seen her before though. Billy Barratt though, I didn't clock at all. We need to start airlifting their dialect coaches to set whenever a script calls for an Australian character." Another cinema enthusiast chimed in with praise, remarking: "I knew Sally Hawkins was British, but when Billy Barratt spoke in interviews it completely shocked me. His accent was so good." The film's performances have garnered widespread acclaim, particularly Sally's portrayal of foster mum Laura, leaving audiences deeply impressed. During a chat with directors Danny and Michael, Sally opened up about what attracted her to the role. She enthused about the script, saying: "Your writing is so - it's just so real," and "It didn't feel like it was one genre or another, it just feels like really good storytelling." Sally also praised the directors' approach, adding: "It's rare for filmmakers to be that collaborative and free, and I always felt very supported and also trusted with your baby."
