Throughout “Bring Her Back,” foster mother Laura (Sally Hawkins) provides something like an impromptu version of descriptive audio to her nearsighted teenage ward Piper (Sora Wong). For a film devoted to rendering vision impairment with dignity by casting a young actress with the condition, these moments are a powerful nod to the importance of accessibility. They’re also a neat metaphor for a film that never transcends its own neat metaphor.
In their breakthrough debut horror feature “Talk to Me,” Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou employed a haunted hand that became a party game for teenagers as a way to understand the debilitating grip of depression. Teasing out this subtle correlation did not require a graduate degree in genre studies to understand. They trusted their viewers could figure out the connection, and its breakout success indicates most did. That balance does not hold in “Bring Her Back,” which falls prey to over-explanation and literalization, much like the firm guidance Piper needs to fully comprehend her surroundings.
The rambunctious Philippous made their name as a YouTube duo known as RackaRacka, and it’s to their credit, they know where their sympathies and perspectives lie. It’s with the young, impressionable, and vulnerable. Horror is scarier when someone still has illusions about the world left to shatter, such as Piper and her older (but still brace-faced) brother Andy (Billy Barratt). The strapping lad teeters on the verge of emancipation following the untimely death of their father, but he takes upon himself the role of being Piper’s protector.
Casting a talented performer like Hawkins as their awkward but affable new guardian helps stave off the inevitable revelation that Laura has a screw loose. In roles ranging from Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” to Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” the actress’ clear sweet spot is in portraying characters with undeniably pure intentions who fumble when translating that passion to others. All it takes is the revelation that her biological daughter, Cathy, passed away during Laura’s initial introduction to illuminate the writing scrawled across the wall in blood.
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This makeshift matriarch might have lost her offspring, but the instinct to caretake only strengthens in that absence. Laura draws a protective circle around her home and leaves a fateful pool in the backyard empty in tribute. She masks her solicitousness under an “aw, shucks” demeanor and effectively disguises the more nefarious intention behind her custodial charm offensive. This is not a mother who is a little too eager to replace – or perhaps recreate – her own progeny.
The details of what she might intend to do with the siblings are initially unclear. But the “selectively mute” 11-year-old Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who’s probably the creepiest kid on-screen this side of “Hereditary,” offers some clues. His lurking presence on the outside of events masks his gradual physical transformation. By the time someone starts literally munching on their own flesh, the message of “Bring Her Back” is not hard to tease out: grief eats its own.
The Philippous, leveraging makeup magic and other practical effects, relishes in the corporeal terror of death and its devastating aftermath. When they can translate something into a tangible sensation, like the camera effects of focus that take viewers into Piper’s distorted field of vision, the film operates within a comfortable range for the directors. Where they struggle to locate resonance is in the emotional realm.
The filmmakers leave one of their most interesting thematic threads regretfully underdeveloped: the tension between Laura and Andy. He’s seen the dual faces of parenting up close and personal as their father doted on Piper but abused him. When Andy acted up, it was to get his attention. The Philippous feel like they instinctively understand the teenager. But they strain to grasp how a parent responds as anything beyond an abstract void they can fill with tropes.
In areas like these, the brothers’ talent becomes their limit, especially as they try to understand the full dimensions of Laura’s grief. Their built-in identification with younger characters leaves them less equipped to see the subtler shadings of maternal loss and longing. (The contrast of maturity in “Bring Her Back” and David Cronenberg’s late period tour-de-force “The Shrouds” is stark.) Because they do not establish her behavior in a foundation built on real and resonant pain, the wilder maneuvers she makes to reconjure the spirit of her daughter offer little more than shock and schlock value. [C]
