Bring Her Back

The hit Australian horror movie Talk To Me was both very good and deeply unsettling. Now its directors (Danny and Michael Philippou) have returned with Bring Her Back, which ups the ante when it comes to disturbing, nightmarish storytelling. The film stars Sally Hawkins as a woman whose grief manifests in terrifying, ugly ways. To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy. https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:21Aisha Harris?

  The hit Australian horror movie Talk To Me was both very good and deeply unsettling. Now its directors have returned with Bring Her Back, and they've upped the ante when it comes to disturbing, nightmarish storytelling. It stars Sally Hawkins as a woman whose grief manifests in terrifying and ugly ways. And depending on your tolerance for squeamishness, there's a chance you, like me, might have watched a lot of it while peering through your fingers. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about Bring Her Back on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 2:29Aisha Harris?

  Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun. Welcome back, Jordan.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me. Hello.

• 2:39Aisha Harris?

  Hello. Also with us is Walter Chow. He's a writer, critic, and film instructor at the University of Colorado, Denver. Hey, Walter, welcome back to you, too. Hey, thanks for having me. Great to have you both. I've got a crack team of horror aficionados. I am very excited. This is gonna be fun. Well, in Bring Her Back, Billy Barrett and Sora Wong play step siblings Andy and Piper. They're orphaned after their father dies suddenly. Andy is just a few months shy of turning 18 and wants to apply for guardianship of Piper, who is younger and has low vision. For now, though, they're sent to live with Laura, a childcare worker played by Sally Hawkins. Now Laura lives in a house deep in the woods, and she's not all there.

• 3:23Aisha Harris?

  She's also looking after another orphaned child, Oliver, who shows extreme signs of distress and neglect. He's played by Jonah Ren Phillips. Very quickly, their increasingly strange behavior disrupts Andy and Piper's close bond and their well-being. Bring Her Back was written and directed by twin brothers Danny and Michael Filippo. It's in theaters now. Jordan, I'm gonna start with you. What did you think of Bring Her Back?

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Obviously, Talk to Me was something of a sensation. Critically and financially, that movie actually outpaced Hereditary. Like, that is technically like a bigger hit for a 24 than Hereditary. I had a really good time. I was so impressed with what it telegraphed about what Danny and Michael Filippo are capable of. And Bring Her Back, for me, exceeds Talk to Me. This one, I was like, this is so seriously my lane with these guys. Because you hear about movies, like, especially coming out of like a festivals scene, where like there's that hype mill around it.

• 4:24Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  It's like, oh, so messed up, and like, you're not even gonna believe this.

• 4:27Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  This movie really did make me genuinely recoil and like hug my legs to my chest in my seat.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Multiple times alongside being emotionally effective and devastating at turns. Uh, super impressed, big fan of Bring Her Back.

• 4:48Aisha Harris?

  Nice, nice. Thank you, Jordan. Walter, how about you? How are you feeling about this?

• 4:52Speaker 04

  It is such a warm hug for me to be here with you guys. I, I feel like so-

• 4:57Aisha Harris?

  The opposite of this movie.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm glad this movie brings about warm hugs.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  I feel so understood and seen here. I love this movie. I love it, love it. I think it is a crazy kind of new masterpiece that I only maybe 50% understand and 50% just fear. And they're making stuff kind of on the vanguard, I think, of new extreme cinema where they're just emotionally devastating and they're dealing with terrors and fears in ways that I've never really thought of before. I mean, talk to me, these are such old ideas, right? The possessed totem, the, I mean, these are old things. Except the way that they do it is so new. I think it's so seldom for me anymore. I'm this old, ugly man and I watch a movie and I feel like I've seen this before.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  You know, shaking my cane at the, uh, lack of imagination. But when I sit in front of these people's movies, I'm like, I have no idea where this is going. I can't believe that you're breaking all of these rules and these unspoken, they're not just pushing envelopes, they're incinerating envelopes. They're like, envelopes? Give me different kind of containers, you know, they're, they're doing things.

• 5:57Aisha Harris?

  Give me Gladware.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Gladware, give me, give me something really hard to, you know, uh, they're doing stuff that I could never feel like I've seen before. And it's constantly shocking and it's not just about the shock though. It isn't a Terrifier movie. It's about this emotional devastation, the grief, the, you know, there's a scene really early on in this at a, at a funeral where, you know, this young boy is being forced to do something that he's not comfortable with.

• 6:22Aisha Harris?

  Such a weird scene.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Oh my God. And it took me right back to my dad's funeral where my mom was part of a cult and insisted on burying him in that cult. And forced us, you know, the kids to do this weird sort of walking around ceremony and chanting ceremony was really not comfortable with. And immediately all those emotions and traumas that I had suppressed for 20 some years flooding right back because of these filmmakers. Out of nowhere, I was like, okay, well, I don't know exactly what you're tapping here, but it's atavistic and it is familiar and I'm terrified right now. And that's, you know, what can I say? I'm a fan, huge fan.

• 6:58Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it, it sounds like it touched something. Deep inside both of you that I wish I could have tapped into. I was excited for this because I did love Talk to Me. Something about that film and the way it deals with loss and grief and channels that through, like you were saying, while through these very old archetypes and tropes, really spoke to me in ways that I could not get through with this film. And maybe I'm misremembering how brutal that Talk to Me was, but this one, I wrote in my notes at one point, "explicative, brutal," in all caps. And at that point, I had been like, looking, as I said, looking through this movie for half

• 7:41Aisha Harris?

  of like, half the time through my fingers, or like, looking to the sidewall and avoiding eye contact with the film. It was too much for me.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  I mean, there's a scene with a kitchen knife that like, I'm not saying it's the most innovative, rule-breaking thing you've ever seen, but the simple effectiveness of it, I've not been able to wash my mind of it since.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  I'll never eat a candle up again.

• 8:01Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, and I don't know if it was just like, I wasn't in the mood for it. Maybe this just isn't for me. I think part of my issue with it comes from, because I have a pretty high tolerance, generally speaking, for violence and for horror. But with this, I think I just wasn't in the mood for it. I also think I just couldn't deal with the fact that this is a movie where children are being abused in the most horrific ways possible. And so I think like, if you are the type of person who, that's just like, a no-no, I mean, you might have guessed already from how we described this early on, but like, it is too brutal and the brutality for me overrode all of the emotional stuff that I think is happening here.

• 8:45Aisha Harris?

  Like, I've recognized it. And I also think that Andy and Piper, the actors playing them, are so good.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  They're so good. They have an incredible eye for who to put in their films.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Unreal.

• 8:57Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, but I guess it just like, it wasn't enough for me. I was waiting for it to be over. I will say, I'm curious what you guys thought about this, but like, when it comes to my horror, I tend to not enjoy either supernatural or this kind of stuff that like, gravitates towards the occult. From the very opening of this movie, it suggests that we are going to be dealing with something along those lines. And it didn't jibe for me, but I also know, like, Jordan, you are someone. Who is very, I mean, you like all horror.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, broad palate.

• 9:27Aisha Harris?

  What do you make of how that sort of plays out throughout the rest of the film? And through Sally Hawkins' performance, we haven't even really talked about here yet.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  No, I, I, and for me, that really is like the tenderness that grounds Andy and Piper's sibling relationship. Especially as you learn how it was embattled initially and how they bonded together and it became something so loving. Like, that really unfolds, I think, in a really wonderful pace throughout the movie. And it feels so earned. And Sally Hawkins' performance is like, my favorite thing about this movie is how it doesn't show you everything immediately. But I think absolutely immediately, as soon as the siblings walk into Sally Hawkins' house, you are aware of how wrong something is.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  But the movie is only going to slowly feed you that information for what specifically the movie is talking about. But because you're so destabilized so quickly by how good Sally Hawkins is, I think it makes every, no matter how like, almost treacly kind and obsequiously accommodating she is, particularly to Piper, everything she does is tinged with so much menace. It is the granular nuance of the relationships within this movie and the performances that I think, to me, keeps it from being an occult supernatural spectacle and truly feels like a movie about relationships I was so invested in

• 10:56Speaker 03

  that when those relationships are being assaulted, I was not relaxed or unstressed for, I think, a single minute of this movie.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love that you talk about the duality of Sally Hawkins' performance because I'm spilling too much, but she reminds me a lot of my mother, my relationship with my mother, in that there was so much like goodwill, but there was also this like frantic. Desperation, this tension, this, the stress.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Narcissism even where the goodwill was always underpinned by potential damage. And it's all meant well, but it's all sort of dialed to 11. Every interaction became with my mother and also Sally Hawkins in this film with this sort of like, everything is fraught. I know that it's based at the bottom on this like really kind of essential love for your kids. But the way that you're going about this is causing irreparable harm and trust. But she brings all this out. For me, it, you know, sort of to Jordan's really eloquent point. I wasn't thinking of it as anything supernatural. I was thinking of it as the things that we do to each other in families, especially when they begin to fall apart.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  All of a sudden now, I'm gonna like gravitate towards the daughter. And I'm gonna like split the relationship between the siblings because I'm threatened by the male presence. There's all this stuff that I'm like Dr. Philling throughout the course of this, you know, trying to understand the psychology that's going on that so that the supernatural elements were almost secondary.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  I was prepared actually the whole movie for the supernatural to be like a red herring. Because it was so like her, yeah, Sally Hawkins and bouncing off the performances of the actors Billy Barrett and Sora Wong and the hero of this film, Jonah Ren Phillips as little child Oliver. And everybody is so intensely fractured and like gaslit and manipulated and traumatized. I was like, is the supernatural occult part of this like truly just vaporware? And actually, we are going to boil down to everyone is so cracked that they are willing to go to any length possible to materialize or

• 12:58Speaker 03

  a circumstance or a reality that is like, none of this is happening actually like. I was in a chokehold. This entire movie.

• 13:06Aisha Harris?

  Well, I, I will say like, I may have oversold the supernatural features of this film. I think, again, I have such a low tolerance for it that like anytime it's even suggested, I'm like, oh, here we go.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 13:20Aisha Harris?

  Um, but I, again. I really wrestle with this because I don't feel as though I can accurately say whether I think it's good or not. I just had such a visceral reaction to it and wanted it to end like thirty minutes before it ended. This is one of those movies where I'm just like, I don't know, man, maybe it's just not for me. And maybe it is actually good. It's just like, not at all for me.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  That's how I feel about Wes Anderson's entire filmography. I get it. I get it.

• 13:46Aisha Harris?

  Jordan, you and I are aligned absolutely on that. Yeah, I also just like in these types of movies, you know, anytime you think of a movie, a horror movie where a child is involved, at least I usually think of like, what is this doing to the actual performer in this, in this movie? Especially someone like Jonah Ren Phillips who like, I don't know how old he is, but he's young. He's very young.

• 14:07Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:07Aisha Harris?

  And so I'm just like, the things that he has to do.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 14:12Aisha Harris?

  I hope they're all getting some counseling and therapy.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Joe Bird was similarly put through so much in Talk to Me.

• 14:21Aisha Harris?

  Right.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  Like, it's amazing to watch, watch interviews with Danny and Michael and they're so zany, they're zany Australian menaces. They look like they're constantly having the silly time of their lives. And I am so blown away at like the pathos of what exists within them and what is like so important to them to get out on screen because they are battling things in these movies. And then they cut like the Raka Raka, Raka Raka YouTube history of them is so just like out of pocket, zany, crazy YouTube stunt guys.

• 14:56Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, the, the last twenty minutes of this film where Piper is sort of, you know, wandering around the house, everything. It really reminded me of a movie called See No Evil, the Mia Farrow movie.

• 15:06Aisha Harris?

  Oh.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  In which they're spending a long time with like horrible things without being aware of it. And I wonder if that sense of like sort of a general dread is what's really definitive for us in our culture right now. I mean, I walk around every day like, there's something really wrong. Why is everybody sort of acting okay? Because nothing is okay.

• 15:24Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  That dread is the dread that I feel here. And, and, and Sally Hawkins' character in a very real sense. Is the manufacturer of all of this. She did all of this. What is it? I don't know. Not, not really. And so it transcends the supernatural for me.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. The things that I'm most impressed by with, with Danny and Michael, that they are capable of is taking, like you said, in Talk To Me, it's like this totem, this old trope of like the archaic thing and the supernatural experience around it. And then like kind of classic elements of the teen horror movie with that amazing scene, the montage where they're all interacting with a hand. Like I, the energy and creativity in that scene, I just was so blown away by. And then in this movie too, they are really good at taking things that are familiar to horror. And what I'm doing, what I think is the kind of coolest thing about the genre is taking trope or cliche or the things that you expect and then doing a remix or putting a personal signature on them such that it, it does the magic trick of making it feel new.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  And to have a low vision character like Piper, played again by Sora Wong, giving such an incredible performance. That is a trope, like what, what is history littered with, particularly in horror cinema, if not an otherizing and a grotescification or a condescension to people who are physically different? Like, oh, let's take this and be autism is a superpower. Or let's take a character who has a visual impairment and then have them wander around in robes like a little Chiny Wan ghost child who like couldn't possibly care for themselves. There's an assertiveness and a dignity to the character of Piper. And I, so I think they take these things that are so well trodden within the confines of horror and they put this polish on them

• 17:04Speaker 03

  that gives them something, a level of integrity and a level of distinction and a level of grit and fully embodiedness that makes it like, you understand this enough to put your own spin on it in a way that doesn't feel like ripping? It feels like sincere creation on your part.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  It's the dignity that you're talking about. It's dignity and I don't get that from Ari Aster's films. So I'm sorry, you know, that's another sacred cow like Wes Anderson that I think you're not supposed to touch. But I don't like Ari Aster's movies for the most part because they don't, he doesn't give his characters dignity.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  You nail it so hard here with the dignity that that Piper has and, and that Sally Hawkins' character has too. It's remarkable. They're completely human beings and, and they give their characters that dignity, that absolute dignity of their relationship of the nobility of grief, even when it takes a left turn.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  You know, all this stuff is. So remarkable for me, especially, you know, as an old person looking at young people thinking like, really? How do you drink from the old well? How do you know this? Yeah.

• 18:02Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. I mean, to your point also, just about the way they depict Piper's character, I think it is intentional and crucial that we do get just a few moments where we are seeing how we can imagine Piper being able to see in the moment. We are getting the first person perspective. At one point in the movie, she actually says, you know, I can see shapes and light. That's what she can see. But they don't dwell on it. It allows us to both see that perspective and also, you know, as the viewer, you know,

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:35Aisha Harris?

  fear for her as well. Like, we are her, but then we're also like on the outside looking in. And like, I do think that it handles, as much as you can handle these types of things, of showing this type of brutality and cruelty. I mean, I think it does do a good job of not leaning into those tropes, as you said, Jordan. Like, and even if it wasn't for me, it's okay. It will, it will be for someone like Jordan and Walter, and I love that for you both.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  And it's, it's never the kind of movie that I would be like, I mean, if you don't think you can take that stuff, give it a chance. I wouldn't. I would be like, if, if this sounds like red flags to you, be like, you should probably skip this one. It's probably gonna be too much. So like, protect your peace. Like, that's not something you want to convince someone to take a chance on if the aftermath of it is gonna be like too grievous for them.

• 19:25Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. I will say, though, like, that does not mean that I am not gonna tune in for their next movie, because I am, I will be curious, because I still, I'm still holding on to like the feelings I had while watching Talk to Me, that like, maybe, maybe I'll feel that way again about another movie they make. Well, we want to know what you think about Bring Her Back. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/PCHH and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/NPRPopCulture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description.

• 19:55Aisha Harris?

  Maybe you'll be into it, maybe you won't. Who knows? But that brings us to the end of our show. Walter Chow, Jordan Cruciola, thanks so much for being here. I love talking with you. This is great. Fantastic.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  See you again.

• 20:07Aisha Harris?

  And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hafsa Pathima and Mike Katsev and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Halil Kamin provides our theme music. Thank you so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.