Bring Her Back (MA) – 104 minutes

 Talk to Me marked “them” as a pair to be watched.

I speak of twins Danny and Michael Philippou for whom that supernatural horror marked their feature directorial debut.

Now Bring Her Back, shot in South Australia, brings more terror.

Originally from Adelaide, the brothers moved to the US at the start of 2019, but continue to make films in Australia.

Piper (Sora Wong) is all but blind. She can only see shapes and light. She should walk with the aid of a cane, but she doesn’t want people to treat her differently, so she chooses not to.

She is close to her older stepbrother Andy (Billy Barratt). The pair shares the same father.

They are horrified when they find their dad (Stephen Phillips) dead, having collapsed in the shower.

Subsequently, social services wants to separate them, but their want is to stay together.

An empathetic Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) tells Andy that he can apply for guardianship when he turns 18 (that is in three months).

In the meantime, she allows both to be placed with a seemingly kind foster mother.

Laura (Sally Hawkins) worked as a counsellor in the department for 20 years.

She is still mourning the death of her daughter, Cathy (Mischa Heywood), who was about Piper’s age when she drowned.

Laura already has with her a strange mute boy, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).

At first she seems nice, if a little too effusive, but soon enough we see a much darker side of her.

Laura watches Ollie closely and even locks him up in his room every time she goes out.

Before long, she is looking to turn Piper against Andy, who keeps seeing visions of their father and appears to be wetting the bed.

He can’t understand what is happening to him.

What is clear is that Bring Her Back has an evil underbelly that manifests itself in the bloody and the gruesome.

Like Talk to Me, this one has been written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman and is directed by Danny and Michael Philippou.

I appreciated the originality in the script. It doesn’t try to cash in on previous horror films, but has its own conceit, which is fraught and frightening.

It is hardly straight forward, taking a while to unravel.

Sally Hawkins is a fine actor and this is a decidedly different role for her. Notably, her craftsmanship again comes to the fore in a twisted persona.

The two young leads are good too. Barratt is readily able to channel Andy’s confusion and frustration. Wong showcases vulnerability and a desire to be embraced and nurtured.

Wren Phillips is tortured and terrifying as Ollie and Upton pragmatic as Wendy.

What is particularly impressive about Bring Her Back is the sound design.

It is something the audience has a heightened awareness of from the get-go.

That is because over a blank screen it is the aural that introduces the movie.

Something bad is going down. Then it becomes a question of figuring out how that something informs the plot.

From that creepy opening, every background sound appears to have been deliberately turned up. Our ears are on high alert. The unease is palpable.

And so it is that Bring Her Back continues Danny and Michael Philippou’s upward trajectory.

But, be warned, with some stomach-churning gore, it is not a movie for the faint hearted.

Rated MA, it scores a 7½ out of 10.