Bring Her Back
Tragedy and grief take many forms, prompt many emotional responses and strange behaviours, not all of them entirely rational; for seventeen-year old Andy, following the sudden death of his father he puts aside his own needs in order to ensure that his partially sighted stepsister Piper receives the care she needs, refusing to let himself be separated from her and stating his intention to apply to be her guardian when he turns eighteen in a few weeks.
For Laura, her young daughter Cathy having drowned in their backyard pool, she has moved from counselling troubled youths to fostering, bringing Andy and Piper into her home to join Oliver whom she describes as “selectively mute,” aware of Andy’s own problems and the support that Piper will need but immediately setting herself up as her new best friend, Andy’s relegation to unwanted outsider quickly giving him perspective on how strange their new carer really is.
The second film directed by the Philippou brothers after Talk to Me, this time co-written by Danny with Bill Hinzman rather than his twin Michael, Bring Her Back stars Billy Barratt as Andy, burying his own trauma to focus on what he sees as his obligation to his sister, determined she must be protected from harm and difficult truths, and Sora Wong as the defiant and independent Piper, refusing to use a cane because she does not wish to be treated differently, and Sally Hawkins as the increasingly hostile and controlling Laura.
Hawkins having made a career of playing lovable eccentrics whose individuality allows others a safe space to be themselves from Paddington to The Shape of Water, here the scatty demeanour hides monstrous purpose unnecessarily telegraphed from the opening scenes in a series of videos of tortured captives, the information and step-by-step instructions imparted specific and sinister, Laura established from her first appearance as someone who struggles to let go, her late dog stuffed, mounted and on display.
Obsessing over Piper while ignoring Andy who doesn’t even have a proper room or bed and leaving the near-feral Oliver (Johan Wren Phillips) locked in his room, with Laura the only one seen to be a responsible adult, Andy regarded as a teenage troublemaker, it is she who has all the power, setting the step-siblings against each other through lies, Piper unwittingly complicit in her own manipulation, unable to clearly see what is happening around her, the deep horror waiting to break through from beneath the rippling surface of the water.
A film of the extremes of love, the justifications to which it drives the desperate, the looping circles of the mind as pronounced as the chalk circles around the house, Bring Her Back is at times as powerful and distressing as its predecessor and the performances by all the leads are believable and compelling, but for all its strengths it does not feel as carefully composed, Laura moving from kooky to deranged too swiftly and laying out its stall with little regard to carefully laid clues even as it orchestrates bloody physical shocks in suburban spaces normally regarded as safe.
Bring Her Back is currently on general release
