‘Bring Her Back’ Directors Went To Extremes For The Nightmarish Horror

Bring Her Back’s directors, Danny and Michael Philippou, are keeping it real, or at least as real as possible. The supernatural horror film, their sophomore effort after bursting onto the big screen with Talk to Me in 2022, took them and their cast down a series of rabbit holes, many of which they didn’t see coming.

From movie nights and practical effects to two-time Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins buying trinkets from thrift stores to decorate the set, Bring Her Back is as terrifyingly authentic as it can be.

“Sally wanted to disappear into this character and be her as much as possible,” Michael explains. “Every character has moments in their life, and in rehearsals, we’d like to play those moments out, even though they’re never going to be seen. We were like, ‘Let’s act them out so there’s some history.’ Sally’s like that, even with the house. To her, this is Laura’s house. She said, ‘Let me make it familiar to myself, dress it and be in it.’ She wanted to familiarize herself with every corner of the set, so she would buy things and bring them in. It helped give it a lived-in experience, rather than feeling like a set, but more like her home. She was in the rabbit hole, which I loved. She is deep in every single aspect, which is incredible because we were in there too.”

The Devil Is In The Details In ‘Bring Her Back’

Bring Her Back is about Andy, played by Billy Barratt, and visually impaired Piper, played by Sora Wong, a brother and sister whom Laura, played by Hawkins, fosters after their father dies. However, it’s not long before they realize their new guardian and her home are hiding a darkness they could never imagine born out of tragedy and a terrifying ritual. A24’s Bring Her Back is R-rated and in theaters now.

“There’s a scene in the movie that is the aftermath of an argument,” Danny explains. “These two people are looking at each other with this rage. As a director, you can sit the characters down and go, ‘Okay, you guys are angry at each other… and action,’ or you can go, ‘Alright, have a fight, scream until your voice is gone, and then sit down and the camera’s already rolling.’ That way, you’ve actually captured something that is much more real than just saying ‘action’ at a certain point. Sally would take that all the way back. She’d start at the beginning of waking up that day if she could. She didn’t do that, but she would do that. The best thing about Sally is that we would continue rolling after the scene was done. I’m not calling cut. She would stay in it and be in there, and it’s the best thing.”

Sometimes, the Philippou brothers didn’t even know that Hawkins, whose work includes The Shape of Water, Paddington 2, Happy-Go-Lucky, and Wonka, was continuing to delve deeper into her character when they weren’t around.

“We went and did a thing with her in London recently,” Michael recalls. “We had lunch, and we went for five hours. She’s such an incredible person. When you’re working with Sally, you want to hang out. We get along so well. Anyway, she had all these script notes. It was this big, fat Bible of the film’s story where she had all these annotations. I was like, ‘Can I take this home?’ and she said, ‘You want that?’ I was like, ‘I would cherish this always,’ so I’ve got that at home. It’s all of our script notes for Laura, and it’s wicked, all of her scribbles and everything. It’s so cool.”

Keen collaborators, the Australian filmmakers also have some set ideas and principles that they won’t shift on. One of them is using practical effects as much as possible. Whether it’s makeup and prosthetics or realistic sound design, it has to create a visceral reaction – even if audiences have to look away.

“We love practical effects because they always seem to stand the test of time,” Danny, who also co-wrote Bring Her Back, muses. “When actors are interacting with something tangible and present, even for a character that has got prosthetics on, it changes them and the way they move and act. It brings a level of realism that visual effects (VFX) can’t achieve. However, VFX are so good at tying that stuff together and helping to smooth out all the rough edges. It’s always a beautiful dance between the two of them, where it’s 90 percent practical, you got five to ten percent VFX helping blend those elements.”

Instead of having one FX team on the movie, the Philippous brought in two companies so they could compete and complement each other in a creative and bloody ballet to raise the bar and achieve the best results possible.

“It’s always the funniest part of the most exciting thing when it’s like, ‘How can we execute this practically?’ There were things in the script where I was like, ‘I don’t know how this is going to be possible. How do we do this practically?’ We had two epic special effects teams on the ground the whole time, each specializing in different aspects. They were incredible and helped bring everything to life,” Danny explains.

“Bring Her Back’s sound design is amazing, too, and she’s so incredible. Emma Bortignon was our sound designer, and we love her to death. She’s so down and game for anything. We were asking her, ‘What is the sound of this?’ and she also knew when a sound wasn’t right. I wanted a sound for Oliver, the mysterious other child in the knife scene. She was sending me things, but they didn’t sound right.”

He continues, “I cringe when I think about metal on teeth, but I was like, ‘Let’s just record the metal on teeth.’ Get me a knife.’ So, we had a knife, she had the microphone, and I just put it in there, started to turn and move it around. I wanted it to be so that audiences can look away and still feel it; they don’t have to look at it. It’s just as painful and effective.”

‘Bring Her Back’ Is Inspired By An Eclectic Selection Of Classic Movies

When it comes to influences, the filmmakers drew on several inspirations across multiple genres, from Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and even the 1997 slapstick comedy Mouse Hunt.

“There were a couple of weekends that were intense periods focusing on the extreme side of Sally’s character, so as not to live there, I said to her, ‘Do you want to come over?'” Danny laughs. “I love Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and it did inspire this film. We’d watch it, and Sally would like to do the voices of the characters and act it out, and she’s so funny. It’s one of my favorite experiences from the whole film.”

“There were certain movie nights that were just watching films that feel like they were in the same genre, and not even exact inspiration points. Those conversations with Sally were never fully about films. It was always about lived experiences.”

Michael adds, “I don’t know quite how this Mouse Hunt influence became a thing, but one day Danny was talking about the inspirations. I think it was in an interview, and they said, ‘What about you, Michael?’ Danny had said all the main ones, and I was like, ‘Mouse Hunt.’ It’s an amazing movie. It has amazing practical effects, and it’s also about manipulation. There’s a scene where they are trying to manipulate the mouse so they can kill it., It’s a nostalgic movie, and it’s also really great.”

Both of the brothers would work with Hawkins again in a heartbeat. They still can’t quite believe she said yes to Bring Her Back. With their shared love of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? would they reunite for a remake?

“The idea of working with powerful character actors and the idea of Sally Hawkins taking on that role and then trying to find someone to match her against is insane,” Danny says. “I love Bette Davis and her career, so the idea of working with actors like that and putting them in a room together is so exciting to me. My fear with a remake is that I won’t be able to live up to the original. I know that I will falter, it’ll be worse, and I’ll let everyone down. That is one of my biggest fears. I’d hate for people to be like, ‘Hey, it’s the guy that fucking ruined that movie.’ There were so many franchises that we got offered after Talk to Me, and I was like, ‘Trust me, I feel like I’m going to screw this franchise up if you let me do it.'”

Michael concludes, “The thing is that these classic movies came out of someone’s vision and an authentic way of expressing themselves. Bring Her Back is our vision. To go, ‘Alright, we’re going do our version of it,’ feels like it’s a disservice to the original. Some people pull it off, but I would like to take that idea and have a different take on it. Maybe it’s not those exact characters, so it’s not a direct remake, but something like that could be cool. Who knows.”