‘Bring Her Back’ review: Sally Hawkins delivers ‘unspeakable evil’ for the Philippou Brothers

Dir: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou. Austrailia. 2025. 103mins

The second characteristic from administrators Danny and Michael Philippou (Discuss To Me) options Sally Hawkins as a foster mom who clearly has one thing to cover, however what precisely? The gradual unravelling of that horrible secret powers Convey Her Again, a malevolent, Australia-set horror wherein two step-siblings come underneath her care and are quickly preventing for his or her lives. The Oscar- and Bafta-nominated actor offers a fiendish efficiency, hinting at her character’s wickedness earlier than delivering a portrait of unspeakable evil that’s sinister in its subtlety. 

A riveting examination of warped maternal instincts

Discuss To Me grossed $92 million worldwide in 2022, and Convey Her Again opens Could 29 within the twin brothers’ homeland of Australia earlier than hitting US theatres the next day. Hawkins’ unsettling flip may elevate the movie’s profile, and people already enamoured of the Philippous’ model of suffocating horror ought to be satiated with this second bloody serving to.

As Convey Her Again begins, teenage siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) have simply skilled a horrible shock: their single father has died. As as they mourn his passing, they study that they are going to be taken in by Laura (Hawkins), a unusual, awkward college counsellor who has already adopted one other orphan, the weirdly stoic Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), whereas grieving the current dying of her beloved daughter Cathy. Andy has all the time vowed to guard his stepsister Piper, who’s partially sighted, and he begins to suspect that Laura has nefarious plans for them.

As with the Philippou brothers’ 2022 debut, Convey Her Again touches on childhood trauma, the occult, and the skinny line between the residing and the useless. Once more working with cinematographer Aaron McLisky and composer Cornel Wilczek, the filmmakers fill the body with a way of foreboding, even earlier than Laura begins to behave surprisingly. Every of her odd actions, which embrace snipping a lock of hair from the corpse of the siblings’ father’s on the funeral, is shot with chilling detachment, inviting the viewer to take a position wildly about her ulterior motives. Over the course of the movie, Danny Philippou and Invoice Hinzman’s screenplay deftly reveals simply sufficient new data in order that audiences begin to see the entire image with out absolutely greedy what Laura has in retailer — or how Oliver components into her scheme.

Hawkins brings a disquieting naturalism to her portrayal of Laura, whose affected sunniness suggests a lady battling non-public demons. The actress brings such shading to the function that even throughout Laura’s sweetest moments, the viewers is braced.. It might be unfair to spoil the place the story goes, however as Convey Her Again turns into extra outrageous and graphically violent, Hawkins’ dedication to depicting Laura as a real believer within the significance of her secret goal offers the movie a sickening seductiveness. Though hardly the primary horror image for instance how scary moms (or foster moms) will be, Convey Her Again turns that style truism into each a darkish joke and a riveting examination of warped maternal instincts.

Her two younger co-stars do tremendous work as siblings who solely have one another though Wong, making her movie debut, can not all the time rescue Piper from being a handy narrative development. Due to Piper’s problem seeing past common shapes and hues, she leans on her brother to defend her from college bullies, however as soon as she falls into Laura’s clutches, her life can be far more profoundly in danger. Generally, the Philippous’ remedy of Piper can veer towards cruelty, consistently capitalising on her sight points with a purpose to go away her helpless throughout suspenseful moments. Actually, horror ought to be ruthless in its pursuit of scares, however the filmmakers’ use of Piper as a prop feels needlessly manipulative.

Convey Her Again goes for the jugular in different, higher methods, delivering a string of grotesque pictures involving sharp knives, fragile enamel, distended bellies and copious quantities of gore. When the Philippous revisit commonplace horror tropes about grief, the image turns into extra pedestrian — and, as with with Discuss To Me, a couple of rickety plot twists and an underwhelming finale undercut the stronger earlier reels. However as a meticulously coiled examine of nasty doings underneath one roof, Convey Her Again convincingly argues that terror begins at residence.