This is one of the most disturbing horror films I've seen in years
The directors, Danny and Michael Philippou, got famous with stunt videos on YouTube before their hit debut Talk to Me (2022) – the one with an embalmed hand as a spirit-conjuring device, ruining lives. You look at the characters in Bring Her Back, which is possibly even bleaker, and worry if a single one will make it out alive.
Teenage siblings Andy (a mightily promising Briton, Billy Barratt, who won awards for the 2019 BBC drama Responsible Child) and his younger sister Piper (partially sighted newcomer Sora Wong, also amazing) are orphaned at the start, when they find their ailing father dead in their bathroom.
The social services pair Piper with a foster mother called Laura (Hawkins, garishly dressed even at the funeral, and unnervingly overfamiliar). Laura is grieving after her own blind daughter drowned in their weird, triangular swimming pool. Andy refuses to be separated from his sister and moves in, too.
It's instantly clear Laura wants rid of this third wheel – the only question is how. We learn to trust nothing she says or does. Another alleged child of hers called Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) prowls around the garden mutely, a feral urchin who keeps breaking his teeth on things and molesting the cat. He also tries to eat a kitchen knife, which doesn't go well and is impressively hard to watch. Whatever Laura has put in him – we know there's black magic afoot, from scratchy camcorder footage of occult rites – seems as diseased as it is demonic.
The horror DNA here is a three-fold splicing of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, Ari Aster's Hereditary and Kate Hudson's chiller The Skeleton Key, a slice of supernatural body-swap hokum for which I have a real soft spot. Bring Her Back could have done with a twist or two, like that had, but this isn't to say it doesn't inflict shocks: there's no safe ground here once we grasp the resurrection agenda, and how single-mindedly Laura's devoted to it.
Hawkins deepens tremendously. She makes this person comically dreadful, then manipulative, then dangerous; but what's waiting in the role is an abyss of desolation she really commits to. Laura's a villain who has brainwashed herself into thinking she's the heroine. That's genuinely tragic.
The ways she tricks Piper into distrusting her brother are pure Iago tactics – it's a wrench to watch them paying off. All three of the young actors give a lot, too. You could get PTSD from the rain-drenched, howlingly sad Bring Her Back just as a viewer. It would be nice to hear the cast were treated to a relaxing beach holiday afterwards.
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Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Maple Social Club, which Gwyther founded with Connor Cameron, 23, is less than a year old and was inspired by run clubs and LA's AM radio morning DJ sets. Their free events provide an alibi, Gwyther says, in the same way a run club is a little bit about running and a lot about meeting people. 'Covid shut down a lot of social life and created lonely adjacent habits, and people are looking to revitalise how they spend their time,' she says. 'We spend so much time online for work and now play, I think people are looking for places and spaces to spend offline. We're trying to make it easier to find those things.' Morning raves also make sense on another, more local, level. Sydney residents are among the world's earliest to bed and earliest risers. In a city whose nightlife sits well below its beaches, wealth and wellness reputations, mornings are sacrosanct. 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