The official trailer has arrived for Bring Her Back, what looks like a chilling new horror film from Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou. Following their breakout success with Talk to Me in 2023, the brothers are back with another dark story—this time centring on a terrifying foster home and some very dark rituals. Take a look above.
Details are deliberately sparse, but the film follows a brother and sister placed in the care of a reclusive foster mother (played by Sally Hawkins), who hasn’t been dealing too well following a loss. As the unsettling trailer teases, it appears that there’s a disturbing ritual involving another strange young occupant in the house, Oliver.
The project is a personal one for the Philippous, who revealed the emotional inspiration behind the screenplay came during a real-life tragedy. “We were in the middle of writing Bring Her Back, and my cousin lost her two-year-old,” Danny said at a recent Q&A event. “We were in the hospital, and I was just seeing her on the bed, holding this kid, and the family were all around him… eventually, over time, everyone let him go. And my cousin was the last one to let him go.”
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He continued, “Horror is a fun way to look at dark things like that… the idea of a never-ending grief cycle is terrifying to me, and seeing raw grief like that is terrifying. That just happened while we were writing. So, that became part of the screenwriting process.”
The trailer itself, while unsettling, is careful not to give away too much. That’s entirely by design. “I watch trailers, I remember every shot in a trailer,” Michael said. “And I find myself, when I’m watching the movie, waiting for those moments. And you’re like, ‘Okay, well, I know that they’re alive, because that hasn’t happened in this scene, you know?’ And it’s always that balance, because you want to sell the movie, but then you also don’t want to spoil it. […] Trust me, the trailer doesn’t show the half of it.”
The cast of the film, which, by the way, was shot in the Philippou brothers’ home state of Adelaide, South Australia, includes Billy Barratt, Stephen Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Jonah Wren Phillips, Olga Miller, Mischa Heywood, Liam Damons, and Alina Bellchambers.
In case you missed it, be sure to check out the interview we were lucky to score with the directors in the lead up to Talk to Me‘s release. RIGHT HERE.
Bring Her Back will be released in Australian cinemas on May 29 and in U.S. cinemas on May 30.
