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Having blown genre fans away with their refreshing take on possession horror in 2022's Talk to Me, filmmaker brothers Danny and Michael Philippou felt the need to deliver with their follow-up Bring Her Back.
"The pressure was almost unbearable [after Talk to Me]," Michael tells GamesRadar+ ahead of its UK release. "There's always talk about this thing called 'the sophomore slump', like people's second films not being good or something – and that was always a fear of ours."
"I wouldn't say we're any more confident now," admits Danny. "Every single thing that you do, you always feel like you're starting from scratch again. When we made Talk to Me, it was a bit more freeing in terms of, like, everyone sort of expected it to fail or for it to be bad for some reason. With [Bring Her Back], it was the opposite."
"Yeah, it was quite strange, there was a little bit of respect towards us on the crew," Michael chimes back in. "But you still feel like you're drowning. It's our vision [though]. There's no one to blame but us if the movie doesn't work, because we get everything that we ask for. We promise that with everything we make, we put our heart and souls into it. And if it doesn't work, there's no one to blame but us."
"Yeah, we're shit," laughs Danny, who penned both Talk to Me and Bring Her Back with collaborator Bill Hinzman.
An arguably bleaker, gorier film than its predecessor, Bring Her Back centers on step-siblings Piper (Sora Wong) and Andy (Billy Barratt), who move in with foster carer Laura (Paddington's Sally Hawkins) following a sudden family tragedy. Unbeknownst to them (and the agency), Laura is already looking after another kid; mute Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) -- and is navigating the death of her young daughter Kathy, too.
Upon their arrival, Laura takes a shine to partially-sighted Piper but seems immediately irritated by Andy, delighting in his discomfort as she purposefully gets his name wrong, goes through his phone, and makes him believe that he keeps wetting the bed. As the teen torment escalates, truths about Oliver come to light, and Laura's behavior becomes more and more unhinged, Piper and Andy discover that they've unknowingly wandered into a waking nightmare -- and the terrible reason Laura has invited them into her home.
While Talk to Me was inspired by a video the Philippou Brothers saw of a friend's bad trip, Bring Her Back was sparked by an argument they witnessed between a pal's non-sighted little sister and her parents. "[She wanted] to catch the bus for the first time on her own," explains Danny. "[They were] being really cautious about it, and wanting to protect her but she wanted to learn how to be independent and learn how to navigate the world on her own. I think that was probably one of the first scenes we came up with."
Since Danny writes the scripts, he acknowledges that he's usually "the main voice on set", but he couldn't be without Michael being there to look for things he "might be too busy to notice or be on top of." And of course, there's the pair's trademark sound design. "We've been making stuff together for so long that we we just know each other's instincts, and we're somehow mostly on the same page. Whenever we argue it's about something really minute or small, like the dB of a sound effect, say, or like when a music cue should come in. But we have different strengths," says Danny. "Michael's very hands on with sound design and music and all that sort of stuff. I'm more hands on with the writing in terms of the characters and stuff. So we just have different strengths."
Despite their self-assuredness in their skills, the filmmakers still had one "terrifying" fear while making Bring Her Back, though, and that was disappointing Hawkins.
"She's such an incredible character actor. Every role that she does, she disappears and becomes a different person," gushes Danny. "Like, I look at her in Blue Jasmine, or look at her in Eternal Beauty, or you look at her in Paddington… Happy-Go-Lucky, she transforms herself in such an incredible way. It was just so incredible that she read the script and loved it, because we thought there was no way in hell that she'd say yes. It just seemed impossible. She's such a generous performer and going down the rabbit hole with her, and how she puts herself into these productions, with every ounce of her being, was so inspiring to see."
"The scariest part of the whole movie, I would say, was the idea of letting her down; she gives so much, and for her to see it and be like, 'what, this is?' was terrifying to me. It was one of the big anxieties," he chuckles.
"She has that naturally warm, maternal presence about her, yeah, and that's kind of what Laura was before this tragedy. We shot the film in chronological order as much as possible, so we were building up to those biggest scenes," notes Michael. "And I just could not wait, because I knew Sally was going to deliver. And she did on every take. It was torturous in the edit, because there were just so many."
"We love Sally, and we still talk to her. She still texts us, which is crazy," smiles Danny. Good to know their worries on set don't stop them from enjoying the process.
Bring Her Back releases in UK theaters on July 26. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
