Interview: BRING HER BACK Directors Danny & Michael Philippou Sharpen Their Knives

Directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou do not mess around. The duo behind Talk to Me and now, Bring Her Back, explore unbearable pain through truly nightmarish sound and sight. Pain is not optional in the ugly, yet beautifully crafted, supernatural worlds that the Philippous gleefully present.

In their sophomore effort and latest collaboration with A24, the filmmakers follow orphaned siblings, Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), placed in the wrong hands of a grieving mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins). It’s a family drama in which the family is torn apart again and again by supernatural and all-too-real forces. Both ambiguous and terrifyingly direct, Bring Her Back is another unsettling success for the Philippou brothers.

Have you both experienced the very audible reactions to this movie in a theater yet?

Danny: Funnily enough, I have not watched a movie with an audience yet. I'm too nervous every time it starts. I'm going to watch it with everyone, and then it starts, and I’m like, “I'm going to get drunk at the bar.”

Sally Hawkins’ performance alone is terrifying. From the beginning, what conversations did you both have with her about shaping Laura? 

Michael: She goes so deep. It was about breaking down every moment. She understood all the little nuances in the writing that no one else had. Also, she would go shopping in-character, buy from shops, and dress the set with items; it feels lived-in. Even after we'd wrapped filming every day, the texts [between us] were huge. The conversation went the entire time. She was just so in it. The thing that I think Sally brought to Laura was the human side and the struggle of what she's doing. It's not from evil. It's not birthed from evil – it's circumstances that have made her this way. She played a very human character, which was amazing.

The sound in your movies is chilling. Even in Laura’s home, what was the soundscape you and your sound team wanted to create?

Danny: Well, because she's watching these tapes throughout the film, these grungy ritual tapes, there is this static that she gets lost in a couple of scenes. We’re tracking her sanity, which gets overwhelmed by this white noise. It’s always super subtle and people don't pick up on it, but I think that even though they're not one-on-one realizing this thing's happening, they're feeling it on an unconscious level.

Michael: There's a monologue scene when she's talking about the loss of her daughter, and there's a clock in the background. We slow down the clock and bring everything down to make her fully present in her remembering Kathy. Sound is a rabbit hole. We go down the rabbit hole with sound and design. There's 750 layers of sound in the movie.

Danny: We just got obsessed with breathing in the movie as well. We really were focused on people's breaths, the way that can control the rhythm and pace of the scene. You can get obsessed with any sound. Our producer asked: “What did you do today?”

Michael: It was supposed to be a day or two for breath passes, but after a few weeks of it, “OK, guys, no more breath passes!” 

People often say what you don’t see is scarier, that the imagination is more powerful. In the case of your work, that’s not the case. What’s your general philosophy for what to show, what not to show?

Danny: Well, especially with Oliver, metaphorically, what he is going through and the cycle of abuse that he's trapped in – it is ugly. It's leaving him scarred in this awful way. Seeing that and lingering on it, there's something about that that feels…

Michael: Grief is all-consuming.

Danny: And I like feeling like voyeurism – when you're stuck and you're staring at this horrific thing. You're in this uncomfortable thing where you're this fly on the wall and you don't want to be there. Another part of it is with those horror scenes, it's like, ah, people can try and block their eyes and not see it, but I like that the audio is also there. You don't have enough hands to break off from what's happening, because you can still hear it. So, it’s as much emphasis on the sound as the visuals of those scenes.

Michael: It's always what is necessary for the story, but maybe our line is, especially for this one, a bit further than normal.

What are lines anyway? What is a line for you guys?

Danny: Yeah, what lines? [Laughs] Well, I tell people, “This is a drama film as well.” But then another side of me is, like, maybe it's more suited to a more hardened horror fan. It is. In one of the test screenings – I wasn't in there – everyone applauded at one of these body horror [scenes], applauded, cheering…

Michael: And then there's another scene where people just walked out during the test screening. There's a scene with a knife. It was people's favorite scene and people's most hated scene.

You two might be one of the few filmmakers that can take it as a compliment if someone walks out of your movie.

Danny: [Laughs] Michael, I didn’t know there were walkouts. What are you talking about?

Michael: [Laughs] People walked. It's too much. They walked out.

Danny: Oh, shit.

Michael: But it's not our intention to have people be offended or anything. It doesn't make me feel happy, but it's just interesting – the line between half the audience loving it or hating it.

Danny: [Laughs] I don’t know if it’s half-half! I don’t know about half!

Michael: Just for that scene in the test screening.

Danny: Oh, that’s true.

Scenes such as that one, though, are that intense because, like Talk to Me, you make people care about these characters’ pain. When you started imagining Bring Her Back, what did you want to accomplish with character in your second film?

Danny: Well, we wanted – my co-writer and I – that it isn't just one person's point of view. There's visual languages for each character. At some points, Laura is leading the film at nighttime, when all the lights are off and the kids are asleep. What's happening in Laura's world? You start getting glimpses into that.

And then there's this point of view even from Oliver’s scenes, where it's an out-of-body experience. The camera's outside of him, like he's staring at himself with these zoom lenses. And then there's Piper's point of view, which we designed a special spherical lens for – where it's her close-ups and these extreme close-ups – just trying to convey her sense of touch and the way that she feels the world.

With Andy, he's having these panic attacks. Everything in the world is getting sucked out around him and he's obsessing over these sounds. I just like that there were handballs between these characters. Then there's a moment towards the end of the film where it fully goes over Andy's point of view, passing over to Piper’s, so I like that this film was balanced.

Michael: Putting yourself in their shoes when they're the leads of the scenes.