DAN WEBSTER:
In the course of her two-decade-plus movie career, the British actress Sally Hawkins has played a variety of characters in several different genres.
For purely dramatic purposes, she starred in three Mike Leigh films: All or Nothing, Vera Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky. Her blockbuster resumé includes Godzilla and Godzilla: King of Monsters.
In classical terms, she starred in Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Jane Eyre, and in the realm of fantasy/sci-fi/romance she earned an Oscar nod for her performance in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning The Shape of Water. She’s even done a couple of children’s film, Paddington and Wonka.
Now she’s added horror to the list. Hawkins plays Laura, an Australian foster parent harboring a dark secret in the film Bring Her Back. And as with everything else she’s done, Hawkins puts in a bravura performance.
Co-directed by the twin-brother team of Danny and Michael Philippou, and based on an original script by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, Bring Her Back has a different feel from your standard horror/paranormal shock-fest. While, yes, it does have aspects of the supernatural, it ultimately plays out as a fever dream fueled by the obsessive needs of an unbalanced mind.
We don’t meet the character behind that mind until several minutes into the film. Instead, we begin with 17-year-old Andy (played by Billy Barratt) and his legally blind stepsister Piper (played by 14-year-old Sora Wong who is sight-impaired in real life). When their father dies suddenly, the two siblings fall under the control of Australia’s version of child-protective services.
When the social worker overseeing their case, Wendy (played by Sally-Anne Upton), says that she’s found the perfect caregiver to take Piper, she adds that Andy isn’t included. But when he insists that the two remain together, Wendy relents. And so the two show up at Laura’s house, which—for the movie’s convenience—is set in a remote, woodsy location.
From the very first moment, it's clear to Andy—and to us, the audience—that there is something off about Laura. If it isn’t the selfie she takes that ends up showing barely half of Andy’s head, it’s the other foster child in her care, Oliver (played by Jonah Wren Phillips). Basically mute, and with the kind of dead-eye stare that could freeze a river of lava, Oliver is your typical horror trope that the Philippou brothers put to perfect use.
What complicates matters is the dark edge of Andy’s past, which he has hidden from Piper, involving the abuse he suffered at the hands of their late father. Having knowledge of this, Laura uses it for her own purposes. And those purposes involve the occult storyline that the film presents, though obscurely, and which is the reason for the title. It seems Laura’s daughter died, and Laura herself is part of a cult that believes in a kind of resurrection ritual.
And only by using both the trance-induced Oliver and innocent Piper in that ritual can Laura reclaim her dead daughter.
This kind of storyline is familiar territory for the Philippou brothers, whose 2022 film Talk to Me was a more obvious tale of the supernatural involving an embalmed hand and some teenagers susceptible to movie-type challenges. Those sensitive to sudden shocks and graphic violence should be forewarned: Bring Her Back boasts its share of bloodletting and vivid images of death.
What works best, though, is the strength of the cast. Wong, in her first acting appearance, is totally believable as a typical tween. Barratt plays the troubled but loyal big brother with style, and Wren Phillips as Oliver is suitably creepy.
But it is Hawkins who is the movie’s version of the baseball slugger Reggie Jackson, namely, the straw who stirs the drink. She has a way of making Laura both ingratiating and cruel, torn by grief and deserving of empathy while determined to commit any number of evil deeds to get what she wants.
“When she’s in that zone, playing a horror thing, even the crew was scared to approach her,” Danny Philippou said of Hawkins in an interview.
That’s easy to understand. In the brothers’ hands, the talented Hawkins makes sure that same sense of threat virtually wafts off the screen.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.