DEM0N DAYS

THE PHILIPPOU BROTHERS GET MORE EMOTIONAL - AND MORE TERRIFYING - WITH BRING HER BACK. SFX MEETS THE YOUTUBE SENSATIONS TURNED FILMMAKERS

- JACK SHEPHERD

AFTER THE RELEASE OF their box office sensation Talk To Me, Danny and Michael Philippou had a choice. The twin brothers, previously best known for their wildly successful YouTube channel RackaRacka, were offered a plethora of projects, including a big-budget reboot of Street Fighter.

“It was a crossroads moment when Street Fighter was on the table,” Danny, who writes the duo’s scripts, tells SFX. “Part of us was like, ‘Oh my God, how fun would it be to just fucking send it on these massive set-pieces?’ [The studio Legendary] were so down for everything, and they were collaborating in such a beautiful way. But then there was also this really personal film, where it’s completely our story and our own world. It was the hardest decision to make, people were like, ‘What the fuck?’ But the idea of making our own characters was always going to draw us in more.”

So the Philippous reluctantly put Street Fighter aside and began assembling Bring Her Back, a film thematically similar to Talk To Me - itself a deeply affecting horror about an embalmed hand that allowed holders to speak to spirits - yet offering a deeper exploration of grief and trauma.

The story follows siblings Andy (Invasion’s Billy Barratt) and his low-sighted sister Piper (newcomer Sora Wong) after their dad accidentally falls to his death in the shower. Left without a guardian, Piper and Andy are adopted by Sally Hawkins’s former child therapist Laura, who lost her own partially-sighted daughter. When the duo arrive at Laura’s secluded house in the woods, they meet her other adopted son, Oliver, played by Jonah Wren Phillips, a shaven-headed boy who can’t speak and eats anything (more on that later).