I’ve been searching for the same stretch of silence I experienced after watching Hereditary on a plane in 2018.
Despite the far from optimal viewing conditions – whirring engines and a woman’s head lolling on my shoulder – I was nauseated but mute for the rest of the long haul flight.
For many – the God-fearing, devil-based horror film of the past no longer washes with us. We need psychological horror. Bring Her Back provides just this.
I felt it from the moment we clap eyes on Sally Hawkin’s manic gaze when searching the face of her new partially sighted foster child Piper (Sora Wong). It kick starts the bile production to your gut; something is severely off.
It then becomes clear that ex-social worker Laura (Hawkins) has recently lost her own vision-impaired child and her macabre fascination with Piper settles like a heart-drop.
Hawkins’ comedic timing is brilliant. She instantly pressures Piper’s step-brother Andy (Billy Barratt) to open up about his father and launches her gas lighting campaign that at one point involves her own urine.
After going through his phone she eerily coos “I’m a counsellor'”, fit with art-teacher beads and non-ironic bayonette reading glasses.
It is a dexterous performance from Hawkins. It is hard not to physically recoil when trying to understand both the empathy and the disgust at Laura’s desperation as she is pushed to psychosis over her unscalable wall of grief.
Barratt, a refreshingly teenager-looking teenager, braces and all, is the making of this film. His wide watery eyes instantly raise the stakes. We are on Andy’s side and we need him to live.
Although Danny and Michael Philippou do ‘unsettling’ well, there are two shortcomings with this film. One is the dreaded miscommunication, or rather, under-communication plot-line. An easy and lazy way to get your audience to invest in your story is to have them internally screaming ‘just listen to your brother!’. This urgent frustration overrides any tacit, carefully built anxiety.
The other flaw is the Philippou brothers use every base Freudian horror in their remit. There is not inherent value in subtlety. However, when you’re ‘doing’ cannibalism, child abuse, parent loss, child loss, abuse of power, body horror, drowning, ghosts and something resembling exorcism it can start to feel like we’re shooting at every cheap shot we have.
This being said, at one point when one of the many abused children in the film begins to eat his own flesh and he starts to peel off his forearm like a snap on bracelet – I looked around to see the entire room, hand over mouths, curled inwards in their seats. Portraying something so grotesque and managing to keep people watching, and not laughing, is a win.
My friend later admitted to me he kept his eyes closed for the entire second half of the film because he “just couldn’t do it.” I saw him shut his eyes and try to drown out the minute-to-minute trauma at the point one child uses a fruit knife like a saw, creating a cleft in his lip.
Do not watch this film if there is any part of you that is feeling sensitive. However, if you want to feel out of your body for a modest run time of an hour and a half.