#159: Bring Her Back
Release Date: May 30th, 2025
Format: Theater (Cinemark at The Pike Outlets in Long Beach, CA)
Written by: Bill Hinzman and Danny Philippou
Directed by: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou
3 Stars
Bring Her Back, the second feature film by brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, is a good horror movie. I saw it at the Pike Outlets with Dakota and Bryson and Ben, and I liked it. The next night, Dakota and I watched the directorial brothers’ first film, Talk to Me, at home on Netflix. It’s also good.
But the two movies are remarkably homogeneous. In style, themes, and plot, the brothers tread almost identical ground.
Does this make them horror film auteurs? Or are they one-trick ponies? And how much does that matter?
Quite a bit I’m afraid.
If we’re to examine recent horror film history, look no further than M. Night Shyamalan. After taking the cinematic world by storm with his horror film debut, The Sixth Sense (1999), he made arguably his best movie, Unbreakable (2000). His next two films, Signs (2002) and The Village (2004), were mostly well-received, but the movie-going public and critics, especially, began to sense the limitations of his artistry. There were parameters to his storytelling that began to feel familiar, and his signature unpredictable endings began to feel, well, predictable. In response he made Lady in the Water, in 2006.
It was a dud.
It was self-indulgent and poorly conceived, and in his attempt to escape the public perception of his previous films, he seemed defiant and bitter.
And the public responded in kind. You could almost sense the satisfaction people got when they realized the film was bad.
“See! I knew he wasn’t Hitchcock.”
“He’s a hack. All he can write are those gimmicky endings.”
“He’s a one-trick pony.”
Shyamalan has never fully returned to the heights of his films from the early aughts, commercially or artistically.
Which brings me back to Danny and Michael Philippou.
Their movie, Bring Her Back, features recent orphans Andy and Piper and a disturbed former counselor, Laura, who uses a set of demonic VHS tapes to summon her deceased daughter, Cathy, back to life.
Their first movie, Talk to Me, features a recent orphan, Mia, who uses a demonic, taxidermied hand to summon the spirit of her deceased mother.
There sure is a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of these plots, and in both films, the brothers lock in on the same style of disturbing imagery, photography, and atmosphere.
Artistically, I’m just not sure what to make of their incredibly limited storytelling palette. Are they capable of more?
Commercially, at least they don’t have the burden that M. Night Shyamalan had two and a half decades ago when The Sixth Sense made nearly $700 million.
I guess time will tell just what kind of filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou are.
