Michael Philippou
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…it also shares some spiritual companionship to the family horrors of Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” and the opening of “Midsommar,” where a death of loved ones derail our protagonists’ normalcy and plunge them into a world of terror and despair.
Cut from the same cloth as occult family horrors like Hereditary and Sinister, Bring Her Back balances its foster family plot with blurry found footage mythology that gives way to a larger conspiracy.
Not since Ari Aster’s Hereditary have I seen a horror film tackle uncomfortable family dynamics so well…
The film especially feels like it pulls both in tone and tenor from A24 predecessor Hereditary (ironic, given how much Hereditary has borrowed from other films).
Ari Aster’s Hereditary chief among them.
Ever since Ari Aster’s Hereditary broke out as a mainstream hit, there has been a massive surge in indie horror movies that are thinly veiled metaphors for grief…
The Philippou’s go all out here, with some genuinely hideous make-up effects, bringing to mind The Evil Dead , while scenes of the purgatory the possessed people wind up in bring to mind Event Horizon .
From the ghastly demon practical effects to its sharp-edge cinematography, Talk to Me evokes the visuals of Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and Drag Me to Hell .
It instantly brings Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead to mind, but it also introduces James Wan’s Insidious into the mix.
Michael and Danny Philippou’s “Talk to Me” contains splendid nasty scares, often feeling like Australia’s answer to Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead” (or Joel Schumacher’s “Flatliners”) for the modern generation, where teens summon ghostly spirits as a party trick or newly found drug.
The concept of the film pays homage to the likes of Stir of Echoes and a horror short story written by W. W. Jacobs and originally published in 1902 called The Monkey’s Paw .
With a nod towards the famous tale of “The Monkey’s Paw” and Flatliners , the concept behind Talk to Me defies belief.
Midsommar (2019)
Directed by Ari Aster
influenced Bring Her Back (2025), Talk to Me (2023)
Visuals Themes
…reminds a shadow or so of another A24 horror movie, Ari Aster’s “Midsommar,” in its chilling sequences of familial bodily maiming that become a motif that terrorizes the protagonists in the present.
…it also shares some spiritual companionship to the family horrors of Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” and the opening of “Midsommar,” where a death of loved ones derail our protagonists’ normalcy and plunge them into a world of terror and despair.
Danny and Michael Philippou are legit, and their success here following Talk To Me echoes Ari Aster doing Midsommar after Hereditary and Jordan Peele crafting Us as his follow-up to Get Out.
I’m reminded of The Night House (2020), Midsommar (2019), and, again, The Babadook (2014) – in which we see how grief throws our reality into a whirlwind and we need to clearly define what is real and what is the consequence of how we haven’t dealt yet with our deepest sorrows.
So, as I sat in a jam-packed screening last night at the Angelika in sweltering hot Dallas, I was overjoyed to discover a film that rivals Hereditary , Midsommar, and even Pearl .
Warum das erfolgreiche Produktionsteam A24 (“It comes at Night”, “Midsommar”, “Men”) an dieser Stelle nicht auf die Bremse getreten ist, bleibt unklar.
The concept of conjuring the dead and making yourself vulnerable to the dead taking over your body is one that is very similar to the concept of The Further from the Insidious movies.
Relevant and surprisingly poignant for a balls-out possession flick, Talk to Me takes that Pet Sematary level of grief and constructs an afterlife that’s eerily reminiscent of the nightmare fuel that is equal parts Hell in What Dreams May Come and “The Further” in Insidious.
It instantly brings Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead to mind, but it also introduces James Wan’s Insidious into the mix.
The Babadook (2014)
Directed by Jennifer Kent
influenced Talk to Me (2023), Bring Her Back (2025)
Themes
Grief has been a thematic crux in many horrors since the birth of cinema, from Don’t Look Now to The Babadook and beyond.
Consistent in unease, it is, like The Babadook before it, a depiction of grief gone wrong.
The self-confessed horror fans from Australia came to filmmaking via their wildly successful YouTube channel, RakkaRakka and along the way were part of the crew for their home country’s best-known horror, The Babadook.
The Australian filmmakers, who got their starts as crew on the cult smash “The Babadook,” infuse the movie with a spirited and youthful aurora.
Think of the creep-factor of Lake Mungo (2008) mixed with the violence of The Loved Ones (2009) and the emotion of The Babadook (2014) and Relic (2020).
The Philippou brothers (both direct, Danny also co-writes) worked in TV, YouTube videos and on the camera department for The Babadook before this first feature, and it’s a debut that shines with a confident vision.
This sense of psychological turmoil, as physicalized by something like a demonic plague, recalls Smile and the films that influenced it, such as It Follows and the various versions of The Ring and the original Ringu .
And while the shocking prologue isn’t the only reminder you’ll get of similarly structured films such as The Ring or It Follows , Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou carve out a timely teen horror update that is often chilling and consistently engaging.
Horror has a special place at Sundance, in recent years debuting features such as The Witch and It Follows reminding us that there are plenty of innovative and fresh genre pieces at the festival.
The best two modern comparisons of Talk to Me would be Hereditary and It Follows .
Horror and grief can be a provocative combination, as seen with David Cronenberg’s thoughts on the grieving process in The Shrouds.
I can count on one hand the horror films I’ve seen in a cinema, in the past two years, that did some active damage to me, where I couldn’t do anything but sit and feel deeply unwell after having seen them: Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, and now RackaRacka’s Bring Her Back.
(The contrast of maturity in “Bring Her Back” and David Cronenberg’s late period tour-de-force “The Shrouds” is stark.)
It's not quite as gore-soaked as, say, "Martyrs," but it has the same kind of attitude.
…channeling the existential nihilism of French New Extremity works like Martyrs to explore just how unhealthy it is to process death at such a surface level…
Cut from the same cloth as occult family horrors like Hereditary and Sinister, Bring Her Back balances its foster family plot with blurry found footage mythology that gives way to a larger conspiracy.
…the Philippous don’t care to investigate further than some grainy intercut footage à la Sinister.
The Exorcist (1973)
Directed by William Friedkin
influenced Bring Her Back (2025), Talk to Me (2023)
Themes Characters
When they’re scary and disturbing? Well, if they’re scary and disturbing, like “The Exorcist” or “Hereditary,” they can be hard to watch — it’s not just the visceral thrill of classic horror, it’s the feeling that we’re watching something we don’t want to see, that we shouldn’t see.
His chilling presence is deeply unnerving, channeling a level of kiddo horror we haven’t seen from a pre-teen since The Exorcist.
However, Joe Bird is best, with him perhaps delivering the best “possessed performance” since Linda Blair in The Exorcist .
Even the monster, if you can call him that, lands like a low-fi metaphor out of Pet Sematary.
This is a resurrection movie with a plot not unlike Pet Sematary.
Twisting the relentless upbeat energy of Poppy from Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky into something more sinister…
The bubbliness of her character in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky…
Hawkins’ Laura is initially introduced as an unfiltered, troublesome cousin to her Happy-Go-Lucky protagonist Poppy, only to plumb new depths with every scene…
Hawkins, so sweet in practically everything (Happy-Go-Lucky, Paddington), pulls off a terrifying about-face…
…many may be fond of her bubbly turn in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky…
Hawkins, forever remembered for Mike Leigh’s comedy Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)…
The concept of the film pays homage to the likes of Stir of Echoes and a horror short story written by W. W. Jacobs and originally published in 1902 called The Monkey’s Paw .
Let’s look at it as “Flatliners” combined with some gruesome elements in Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead”, albeit rather colder and more distanced.
Counterbalanced against the high-energy stupidity of teen horror, what you get is a movie that aims to scare the fuck out of you with an abyss that feels a little too real and often ventures into Evil Dead levels of violence and shock (i.e.
…similar to Red Rooms or Speak No Evil (2022)…
I can count on one hand the horror films I’ve seen in a cinema, in the past two years, that did some active damage to me, where I couldn’t do anything but sit and feel deeply unwell after having seen them: Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, and now RackaRacka’s Bring Her Back.
From the ghastly demon practical effects to its sharp-edge cinematography, Talk to Me evokes the visuals of Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and Drag Me to Hell .
In a year filled mostly with horror films aiming to hedge their bets with levity (see: Companion, Clown in a Cornfield, The Monkey)…
However, such morbid themes can also be a crutch to hide a limp story, as in the case of The Monkey.
Danny and Michael Philippou are legit, and their success here following Talk To Me echoes Ari Aster doing Midsommar after Hereditary and Jordan Peele crafting Us as his follow-up to Get Out.
While the film’s prologue shows the promise of something ghastly and exciting, our expectations are tempered by plot movements cribbed from other similar “haunted object” films, specifically Mike Flanagan’s Oculus , in which its characters confront a cursed mirror that tricks them through unreliable visions.