Reconnecting with the dead is a universal dream that Danny and Michael Philippou have twice imagined as an unholy nightmare.
The first time was with their 2022 breakout Talk to Me and now with Bring Her Back. For the follow-up to their auspicious debut, hitting theaters May 30, the Australian twins once again fixate on young people’s grief over the loss of their parents.
However, their latest is also concerned with the flip side of that equation, focusing on a foster mother, Linda (Sally Hawkins), who takes in two orphaned children—17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his semi-blind stepsister Piper (newcomer Sora Wong)—while coping with the recent death of her biological daughter.
Sorrow is ever-present in the Philippous’ cinema, and it begets supernatural chaos and madness of a startling sort, with their material encased in a shroud of doom and gloom that’s punctuated by some of the gnarliest jolts in recent memory.
Having started as YouTube sensations (operating under the banner RackaRacka), the directors continue to exhibit exquisite control over pace and atmosphere with Bring Her Back.
They additionally have a gift for eye-openingly nasty imagery, which in this case frequently concerns mouths gashed and smashed by all manner of inedible objects. A story about sight, mourning, hunger, and resurrection that pulls no punches, the film is an even more assured vision than their prior gem, led by a tremendous Sally Hawkins performance in which every welcoming smile, word, and gesture is laced with malevolence. Consistently eerie and jarring, it’s a tale of terrifying trauma that’s a frontrunner for the year’s finest horrorshow.
After only two films, the Philippous have demonstrated a command of the medium—and macabre material—that eludes most of their modern genre compatriots. On the eve of their sophomore effort’s theatrical premiere, we spoke with them about their fascination with dead moms and dads, collaborating with the Oscar-nominated Hawkins, and the potential sequels in their future.
In the wake of Talk to Me‘s success, how much pressure did you feel making a follow-up?
DANNY: I could literally feel the pressure mounting. Once Talk to Me was getting traction, it was starting to paralyze me.We just had to sign on and drive. Like, get on the train and make sure it leaves the station or, otherwise, I’m just going to stay here and I’m not going to do anything. It was like, just throwing myself into it.
I get that.
DANNY: I remember, there was an interview we were having at the start of the [Talk to Me] press tour when I didn’t really know how to talk about the film yet, and I could feel a panic attack coming on. If it was up to me, I would just walk out of the room, but because you’re sitting there and you have to talk, it’s something about throwing yourself into it—that’s the way to really confront it. So the sophomore slump, that was the joke on set. You just have to go into it.
MICHAEL: There really hasn’t been a break since Talk to Me came out; even before the beginning of that year, it’s been nonstop. I think we didn’t want to stop because, as Danny said, you get into that position where you start second guessing everything. We want to make a bunch of movies, we have so many stories, so it’s like, let’s just make one and not think about everything else. Let’s just make the best movie we can.
Bring Her Back shares with Talk to Me a focus on characters who are dealing with the deaths of parents. Was that a conscious repetition?
DANNY: Because they were developed at the exact same time—we were writing Bring Her Back as we were writing Talk to Me, and we would hit road bumps on one and jump over to the other—you’re naturally expressing what you’re going through at the time. We were going through grief at the time, and people that we were talking to were talking about grief, and it didn’t bother me too much because they felt like their own stories.
Was it a deliberate shift to tackle grief from a more somber, measured angle?
MICHAEL: Yeah, we wanted to commit to a different kind of horror film, because our instincts are the fast-paced punchy stuff like Talk to Me. The stuff that would really challenge us is committing to the more psychological aspect. It’s still a horror film, but a different kind of film. We wanted it to be a snowball. To spiral out of control, from the beginning all the way through. We wanted to build to those moments so they really landed, and to commit to that style of storytelling.
DANNY: One of my big anxieties, even with Talk to Me, was the moments where you were just sitting down and talking to the actors, and you can’t hide anything with big moments. You’re talking to these actors and you’re building a character’s conversation. For some reason, those scenes scared me the most on Talk to Me, and it was about confronting that fear as well with this.
Why did you choose to pivot this story around children with limited/no eyesight?
DANNY: The story evolves and there are reasons for all those things, but the main inspiration point was a friend whose little sister is non-sighted. There was this thing going on in the family where she really wanted to catch the bus on her own. Her family was a bit like, oh, we don’t think we want you to do that, you’re not ready for that. But she’s like, I need to learn how to be independent; I need to learn how to navigate the world.
I could see both sides of the argument, and I found that scenario, and her, really interesting. I loved talking to her and hearing about her perspective. So it began just about having Piper as a character, and it evolves, and horror spawns out of that, and you make sure it all ties in. But that was the biggest inspiration point.
MICHAEL: And truths and lies, what you see and what you don’t see, and the different interpretations of that. For example, when Andy punches the wall and Laura is screaming…
DANNY: Spoiler! [laughs]
MICHAEL: Sorry, I’m just saying, she’s screaming, but she’s almost got a smile on her face, but to Piper that’s a different thing versus what Andy sees.
DANNY: Yeah, perspective goes all the way through the film. Even moments when Oliver [Jonah Wren Phillips] is hitting the window and Andy’s seeing that—it’s just different points of view from different people’s perspectives that I found really interesting.
The film doesn’t work without a big, multifaceted performance as Laura, and Sally Hawkins delivers. Was she your first choice for the part?
DANNY: She was at the top of the list because we knew we wanted a character actor. There were like 10 names that were put together between the producers and A24, and Sally was on top of the list for everybody. It was about sending the script to her and then crossing your fingers that she would do it.
MICHAEL: There’s no way we thought she was going to f—ing do it! [laughs] And even people saying, our energies, with her, it just wouldn’t work. Like, we’re too different. But we really got along from that first day.
DANNY: She connected to the material. She wasn’t looking at it as a genre film; she was looking at Laura the character, and she was looking at the story. Our team got back to us and said, “Sally really loved the script.” Then getting on the call with her, and the collaboration with her—it was the best part of the film.
Were there things in the process of that collaboration that changed the character?
MICHAEL: It was written in a different way. The character was a more outwardly imposing figure. It was more physically imposing. But Sally, what she did was make it more psychological. She’s messing with doing things underneath the layers of the kids. That’s the thing she bought—it felt more human.
DANNY: The first thing we do when an actor comes in is go through every single scene and break down every scene and say, this is what I was feeling, this is what I’m trying to convey. What do you get out of the scene? What do you personally think about that? That’s a part of the process.
Neither of your films skimp on jarring horror. How do you weave those moments into the action, especially with a movie like this?
DANNY: It’s always making sure it works for character and theme. And it’s always designing the characters so they can exist in a drama sense, and then you can start implementing that horror stuff. Always making sure the horror ties into the themes and characters.
But also, that there’s a sense of danger to the horror. Censoring yourself too much or pulling it back, I feel like that takes away the punch or takes away the danger. We want you to come into one of our films and be like, f—, literally anything could happen. I want our films to be an exciting experience because you feel like we will go there.
MICHAEL: The grief is all-consuming. That’s where the idea of Oliver comes from, and it’s about not shying away from the physical representation of that. So yeah, we have those moments, and I think that this one, probably more than Talk to Me, is a bit more unflinching when it gets to those moments [laughs].
Is it important to keep producing films in Australia?
MICHAEL: Before we did YouTube, we were working on film sets. That’s where we came from, was all different crew crews around South Australia. There were so many people I met and I knew who were passionate that I wanted to work with when we did a movie, and we surrounded ourselves with those people. That’s why it always feels comfortable going on-set with those people, because you know them and they understand you and the way you work. You’ve created this kind of family of towns and people that you can trust.
DANNY: But it depends on the project, because we’re doing a documentary right now as well, and that’s been shot in Japan, the U.S. and Mexico. But drawing from people that you know, I just always have that Australian accent in mind.There’s Australian sensibilities and I just feel really comfortable there in a character sense. I always love coming home.
There are plans for Talk to Me 2. How do you approach it given that only a few horror franchises have pulled off a follow-up that’s equal to the original?
DANNY: Once we finished the Talk to Me script, we were naturally writing scenes for a sequel. It just kept going, like, what happens after this, and what happens there, and where does the hand go? You just keep writing. So I’m excited for it because naturally, we had a sequel in mind. We were already doing it. I just knew that I had to step out of the world for a little bit and then reenter it with a fresher perspective.
There are two scripts for Talk to Me 2 and they’re following two different sets of characters, and it’s about having enough time away from it to come back to it reinvigorated and really excited about it.
MICHAEL: We want it to be done right, because you could just go make one straight away. But we didn’t want to rush it.We want to make sure that it’s the right story to tell in that world. And also, like Danny said, having a break from it and coming at it with a new perspective.
Do you have any additional plans—perhaps in genres other than horror?
MICHAEL: Our minds never switch off with ideas and stories, and with YouTube, we were able to get so many of those small stories out of our heads. But there’s also a lifetime of other films that we want to create. We want to be active and keep doing stuff. The documentary is going to be the second half of this year, and then it’s seeing what kind of film we want to do.
DANNY: I feel like I’m not done with the horror genre yet. I still feel like there’s more stories to tell, so I can see us doing more horror films.
MICHAEL: That’s not the only genre, but yeah, probably the next one feels like horror. It’s still exciting to us.
DANNY: We’re excited about action, we’re excited about animation, we’re excited by documentary. It’s just whatever feels natural.
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