This week, we were treated to an advance screening of the Philippou brothers' sophomore feature, Bring Her Back, followed by a live stream Q&A with the directors.
A word of advice: see this opening weekend before anyone can spoil it for you. The Talk To Me filmmakers' follow-up is an uncomfortably accurate portrayal of grief and love. The directing duo does not shy away from agonizingly heavy material. Nobody will accuse these guys of making feel-good fare any time soon; instead, they opt for hauntingly beautiful work that follows you home and sticks to your insides like tar.
A real-life family tragedy planted the original seed for this story, with the film acting as a way for Danny and Michael to cope with the ugly horror happening in the real world.
“It's a really hard story to tell, but our cousin lost her two-year-old. We were in the hospital with her, and the family was surrounding her in the hospital bed. Her son was on the bed and they were holding onto every part of him, his hands, his feet, and his head. My cousin was the last person to let him go, and she didn't look like she was ever going to be okay ever again,” Danny explained. Adding, “It was tapping into that a little bit and looking at that. It gave me a big sense of anxiety, it was so heartbreaking and so awful, and the idea of this cycle of grief that wouldn't end. Or if she wasn't okay ever again, if she couldn't let him go. And that was one of the seed ideas for this.”
Additional loss touched their lives during the making of the film when they lost a close family friend, “There was nowhere to process that, to put that. And then the film became this place that you put it in and those emotions. We were very open about it with Sally and our producers. It changed the script and the scenes that were written to be scary, ended up sad, and it was the most expressive thing.”
To call this a spiritual successor to Talk To Me feels fair. This very much feels of the same world as their feature debut, with the Philippou brothers' stamp firmly affixed to it. But the energy is quite different (understandably so). The Philippous themselves explained it best: “Talk to Me was a party movie, and then we wanted to do a character study. We wanted to do a Slow Boy. We wanted to focus on something that was more psychological. So there were different tones and different tempos. It was a bit scary to do because Talk to Me is so, oomph, oomph, oomph. This is like a snowball and a spiral out. It was scary, it was just a terrifying thing.”
That's not to say there's no fun to be had. Bring Her Back showcases practical FX galore, which is important to the Philippous. They enlisted the help of two FX companies, one of which was Larry Van Deunhoven's Melbourne-based Scarecrew Studios. Danny and Michael joked that they encouraged a little friendly competition between the two FX companies, upping the ante on every incoming effect.
“We'd pit them against each other. ‘Hey, that dead body looks pretty cool. You guys have got to do better than that,' and the work was incredible. But it was trying to find a way to execute everything as practically as possible. And that was always the most fun challenge.”
The duo actually decided to do the VFX on their own to subtly aid in blending the practical FX before realizing “We need help.” Ultimately, “there were a bunch of different companies that helped,” but the Phlippous admit, “It was a learning process.”
The benefit of shooting mostly in sequential order was that it allowed the actors to build up their performances, which is especially helpful when working with a first-time actor, as was the case for lead Sora Wong (Piper).
“We tried to have the film as much as we can in chronological order, so to play out as the film progresses, to help the kids build up to those bigger scenes and then for Sally to properly track the character, so we didn't have to go to the end and come back. When she came on set, she was fully prepared and in these wild head spaces. You could always just keep recording because she would never break character.”
According to Danny and Michael, this experience was more difficult than their first film. “It's so much more complicated than Talk To Me was, in the editing process. Because it is a balance, so you have to find the right tone.”
When it came to finding the right tone and pacing, they described it as “a really difficult process, but we have an amazing team with us, amazing editors who we tortured, I feel so bad for. It is just getting really talented people to help you navigate and find it.”
In addition to openly being inspired by Psycho-Biddy Horror, the directors also had another heavy influence when it came to striking that tonal balance. “We've talked about being inspired by Korean cinema and the way they're able to jump between all these different tones. We're just so obsessed with that. You could have a comedy beat in a really horrific sequence or horrific moment. I love that, balancing those things.”
Bring Her Back is in theaters May 30.
