Danny and Michael Philippou, the twin brother directing team behind 2022's Talk to Me, have returned to the genre with Bring Her Back, another very dark horror film centered on people dealing with debilitating grief. You know. Fun stuff!
After losing their only parent, 17-year old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind, younger step-sister Piper (Sora Wong) are placed into foster care with Laura (Sally Perkins) a former children's counselor. At first she seems kooky but kind. But soon, Andy begins to suspect something sinister is at play.
Both Talk to Me and Bring Her Back deal with loss, and the urgent longing for connection beyond the grave. Talk to Me's ventures into the world of the supernatural had some moments of levity, turning ghostly possession into a kind of party game which resulted in some exhilarating and often funny moments. But Bring Her Back is a movie you endure more than you enjoy, and there's not one moment in it the entire film that I could describe as fun.
The Philippous do a great job of establishing Andy and Piper as very sympathetic characters from the get go, and Barratt and Wong are so good in their roles, that you really don't want to see anything bad happen to them. And when bad things do, it hurts. It's literally horrifying.
But the film takes way too long to establish just what is going on with the Laura character, and despite Sally Perkins also giving a stand-out performance, any sympathy we are supposed to have for her comes too late, resulting in an ending that doesn't hit the way I suspect it's supposed to.
So, yes, the film is filled with terrific performances, is beautifully shot, and is absolutely effective; at times so horrifying I had to cover my eyes. (If you have any phobias surrounding dental trauma, you may want to skip this.) And yes, I know horror movies are supposed to affect and horrify you. Absolutely.
But it is up to every horror fan to decide the level of horror they can
endure. And turns out, watching vulnerable children subjected to multiple traumas is not the kind of horror I can endure. Bring Her Back is a good horror movie; perhaps even a great one. But I can safely say I had a miserable time watching it, and absolutely never want to see it again.
While watching the dark comedy Bad Shabbos, I kept finding myself pondering what the prison sentence for accidentally causing the death of someone via a practical joke may be. Obviously, involuntary manslaughter would be the charge. But would someone really face a long prison sentence? Especially a white kid from a well to-do family in New York?
The Gelfands, the family at the center of Bad Shabbos, do not think with such rationality, so when a guest at their Friday night shabbos dies as a result of a prank, they go to extreme lengths to try and cover up the crime, and a dinner that was supposed to bring the parents of newly engaged David (Jon Bass) and Meg (Meghan Leathers) together for the first time turns into a comedy of errors.
Bad Shabbos is not the most original comedy, and I'd say only about half of its jokes land. But if the movie is worth seeing at all, it is for Cliff "Method Man" Smith's hilarious performance as Jordan the doorman, who ends up being the exact kind of guest one may need at a murderous shabbat dinner. He can charm parents, quote the Talmud, and knows when and when not to use a luggage cart to get rid of a dead body.
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