REVIEW: Foster mom fosters nightmares in ‘Bring Her Back’

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What’s the opposite of a Venn diagram overlap? Whatever it is, “Bring Her Back” is the film equivalent, with two potential audiences that might cancel each other out. Fans of horror movies that work your every last nerve may not appreciate the casting of the great British actress Sally Hawkins as a foster parent with a devilish agenda. By contrast, fans of Hawkins’s work in art-house crowd-pleasers like “Maudie” and “Happy-Go-Lucky” – or even mainstream fare like “The Shape of Water” and the first two “Paddington” movies – may run screaming from the theatre.

All well and good, and forewarned is forearmed. “Bring Her Back” is the second feature from the Philippou twins, Danny and Michael, who rose from making shock-comedy YouTube videos in their home country of Australia to becoming the next big horror auteurs before they turned 30 by writing and directing the 2022 surprise hit “Talk to Me.” Like that film, “Bring Her Back” is close to, but not quite, a triumph of style over substance – foreboding, unnerving and ultimately very gooey in ways that linger like the aftermath of a bad dream yet lack the nightmare cogency of truly great horror.

Unease and inexplicability both turn up early, with stepsiblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) traumatized by the sudden death of their father (Stephen Phillips) while taking a shower. What killed him? Don’t ask. Where’s their mother? Doesn’t matter. Threatened with separation by social services, the two make their case to remain together and are assigned Laura (Hawkins) as a foster mom.

In Hawkins’s performance, Laura is chirpy and chatty, the kind of sunny sort who gives positivity a bad name. (If you’ve seen “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mike Leigh’s wonderful 2008 movie in which the actress plays a born optimist, “Bring Her Back” is like the other shoe dropping; the two films would make one hell of a double bill.) Piper is almost completely blind – the filmmakers play the actress’s unfocused eyes for additional creepy vibes – and by coincidence (or is it?), Laura had a blind daughter who recently drowned in the swimming pool out back. Glimpses of a VHS tape detailing some kind of horrifying Slavonic ritual keep the tension tight. Is Laura in some kind of cult? If so, what does it, and she, want?

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Like much of the “elevated horror” in which cutting-edge distributor A24 specializes, “Bring Her Back” doesn’t bother to answer all your questions, even when that might result in a stronger movie. In a sense, it doesn’t have to when it can trot out reliable new tropes of the genre: basso profundo rumbles and whispers on the soundtrack, visual games with focal planes to keep the audience off balance, and supporting actors cast for maximum unsettling presence (Milly Shapiro as the little sister in Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” being the textbook example).

The Philippous have a lulu of the latter in young Jonah Wren Phillips as Oliver, another of Laura’s foster children and a figure of pure visual dread. Wide-eyed and seemingly possessed by a demonic wraith, Oliver is a silent, staring somnambulist, and all he has to do is appear in a corner of the frame to give an audience the willies. And that’s before he starts going at himself with a kitchen knife. “Bring Her Back” is not the kind of horror movie that promises grue and doesn’t deliver, and when the carnage comes, it is fulsome, fleshy and wet.

As the endangered siblings, Wong is artlessly sympathetic and Barratt pulls you to his side as a protective older brother no one believes is up to any good. “Bring Her Back” keeps piling the traumas onto poor Andy past the point where they make much sense, though, and the Philippous are clearly still young enough to think modulation and moderation are for weenies. Given the likely success of this movie, there’s no reason the directors need to think otherwise, and, anyway, they’ve got Hawkins having a happy horror holiday and little Jonah Phillips burning a hole in the screen. That’s enough for now, but God help us when they grow up a bit.

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Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.

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Three stars. Rated R. At theatres. Contains strong, disturbing, bloody violent content; some grisly images; graphic nudity; underage drinking; and language. 104 minutes.

Rating guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time.