Lots of Gore, But Little More

1 star

The reactions were opposites: on one side of the theater, people groaned in pain and disgust at the gory events unfolding on the screen, while on the other side, I sat, moaning in boredom and frustration over the confusing mess of a movie I was wasting my time on.

The only thing both sides agreed on was a wish that it would be over soon.

Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me), Bring Her Back tells the story of a brother and stepsister, angry Andy and sight-impaired Piper (played by Billy Barrat and Sora Wong), who get put in a foster home following the violent death of their biological father. Their new foster mom, Laura (Sally Hawkins), seems to be a perfect match, as she has, or had, a blind daughter and therefore possesses the skills and patience to deal with Piper’s problem. She is also fostering a frighteningly demented nephew named Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips), a murderous-looking mute who hovers in the background waiting for the gorefest to begin.

Of course, there’s more happening in the story than just a kind-hearted foster mom trying to give two lost kids a new beginning. Without giving away too much of the plot, which has enough holes in it to strain spaghetti through, Laura never really came to grips with the loss of her daughter and has plans to bring her back to life. Gross and gory plans that involve lots of blood, vomiting, cannibalism, and corpse eating. Plans she developed by watching an old VHS “how-to” tape depicting creepy hillbilly rednecks bringing one of their own back to life. (They’re never identified as such, but there’s something about a fat greasy-haired white guy in tighty-whities that screams “hillbilly” to me.)

It was about the same time that the film reveals Laura’s ultimate plan that my confusion level started to bubble over with unanswered questions. Where did Laura get the video? (And why are creepy found footage nasties like this always on VHS?) How clueless/damaged are these kids to not be able to see their new ‘mom’ is a psycho? Wasn’t the way she got them shitfaced a clue? Don’t they have background checks for foster parents in Australia? 

It’s natural for movies, especially genre films like this, to keep the audience guessing about what will happen next. The best ones keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end, when WHAM! the big secret is revealed. Strange and unbelievable things happen along the way, things that can terrify you to the point where you know you’re gonna have nightmares. You leave the theater shaken, stirred, and hung out to dry, but in a cathartic way. 

Bring Her Back left me disappointed and angry over wasting two hours on another over-hyped horror movie that had neither style nor substance, just cheap carnage.