Bring Her Back Made My Day

Ever since I saw Bring Her Back, I haven't been able to look at the world the same way. I've been spiralling all week. It isn't fear that dogs me though, it's something else.

Watching this meticulously crafted downward spiral of misery on film felt like having my head held underwater. It forced me to look at things that I never wanted to see. Nothing's out of focus, nothing's in the background, and nothing is left to the imagination. It's--

he screams while she pushes stitches through the wound, it's

--excruciating.

All I could do was grit my teeth and watch as the seeds of confusion laid by Laura's (Sally Hawkins) odd behaviour sprouted into discomfort, anger, and full-on terror. Her verbal jabs morph from playfully hostile to complete madness. The tension only rises, and I was helpless to look away from--

The beaded curtains-----splintered jaw----an extended hand reaching toward a voice saying--

stop

I can't cut up fruit without hearing the jolting clatter of steel on bone. I can't even look at the pool in my neighbours backyard. Each time I pass by, I'm just a child sprinting to their bed after all the lights have been turned out. A sickly residue of dread has settled over me since the movie ended, but there's also,

inexplicably

Joy.

Instead of flinching at the horrors onscreen, I was vibrating with glee. No matter how badly I wanted to cover my eyes and look away from the desecrated corpse, or the little boy ferociously peeling the skin from his arm, I forced myself to watch, to soak in every bloody second. I practically bounced out of the theatre. By the end, I felt like I was the one possessed. I can't escape the film. Images flash before my eyes, unbound, between blinks.

...The bloated, bloody body of a demon stalking its prey.

...Andy's face half-submerged in muddy water.

...A yowling cat trying to escape Ollie's iron grip.

Terrible and fascinating all at the same time. It's been ages since a movie lit a blaze in me like this, but I remember when that jolt of inspiration was almost constant.

I've never not been in love with filmmaking. I spent my childhood watching movies non-stop, and devouring books on the craft. I carted home my library card limit's worth of Spielberg biographies and Save the Cat knockoffs month after month. I'd spend my afternoons lying in the sun, the books sprawled out before me, convinced that this would kickstart some kind of creative osmosis.

I had to know how the magic trick was done. I wanted to make movies that made people feel as unstoppable as Indiana Jones, made them cry as hard as I did about pie à la mode in Little Miss Sunshine. And I wanted to use--

Sound and lens rip the audience from their seats. We are the primal terror climbing up the back of Piper's throat as she finds

--every piece of what I learned. I directed my friends in homemade productions with bedsheet backdrops and a DIY slate I didn't even really know the purpose of yet. We made all kinds of movies. Action. Drama. And a shit ton of horror.

Those were always my favourites. They were about things I would never experience except through the camera lens. When I was making movies, I could break the rules and escape from my life for a few hours. Every intrusive thought that I was too scared to express in my real life, I poured into the sick and twisted images in front of my camera.

At 17, I enrolled in film school with dreams of Hollywood and notebooks full of hastily scribbled story ideas. Along the way though, something shifted. That purpose, that hunger for expression, started to dim.

--raindrops in the pool--floating near the edge something is--

Drowned in nothing but on-set drama and essays on the composition of Citizen Kane, the luster had worn off my celluloid dreams. A toxic cocktail of fear and hopelessness took hold as I tried desperately (and unsuccessfully) to break into the industry, giving my life over to short films that never saw the light of day. My friends and I were forgoing sleep to moonlight as PAs, spending our nights wearing high-vis vests in parking lots. The passion that used to surge through me every time someone yelled "Action!" had evaporated, replaced with employment anxiety and permanent eye bags.

So I did something I'm still ashamed of—I pulled the plug. My guiding light since childhood was reduced to a spark, burning feebly in the back of my mind.

Then I saw Bring Her Back, and everything changed.

It didn't just scare me, it struck a flint that turned the spark back into a roaring flame. It's a hard thing to make any movie. It takes a lot of time, manpower and skill to even finish one, But to make something great? That's almost fucking impossible. So when it happens, you feel it.

With Bring Her Back, I felt it. The confident hand of the filmmakers was at my back when Piper and Andy arrived at Laura's house, pointing out the cat, the taped down rug, the untouched bedroom. Watch closely, it implored.

Even though it's a major A24 film, Bring Her Back reminded me of the kinds of movies that my friends and I made in our backyards over childhood summers. The ritaulistic VHS tapes looked like something we dreamt up while running around the forest with shitty video cameras and rubber masks. Like Ollie flings his bloodied body around, we threw ourselves down hills and out of trees, painstakingly painting ourselves with bruises and fake blood.

Like our films, Bring Her Back is scrappy and resourceful. It uses Laura's lingering stare, every--

PUNCH

--pause to achieve a singular goal: terror.

My childhood horror flicks weren't anywhere near as sophisticated as this movie, but they were imbibed with the same uninhibited spirit of creation. One that had to be expressed. Whether Bring Her Back is your thing or not, you can't deny that it's vision. It prepares a ritual of nightmares and makes you the host. However hard it is to watch, I can--

eye sockets, hollowed out, she can't

--see that the people behind the camera threw every ounce of themselves into it. Their grief is tangled up in Piper's, their frustrations manifest in Andy's attempts to escape Laura's clutches. I can't help but relate.There are scenes in this movie that I genuinely can't believe made it to the final--

put the knife down it's going to

--cut. The same manic, borderline sadistic, instinct that spurred my friends and I to build a padded cell in the basement is bubbling beneath the surface of Bring Her Back. That can only come from creating something that comes from deep in the

--freezer--

soul. That's how making movies should feel. I walked away from the industry because I'd given up on finding that. I thought filmmaking could only lead to low-wage misery, but the Phillipou brothers have proven me wrong.

Bring Her Back is exactly the kind of movie that I've dreamed of making since I started editing together homemade horrors on my family's video camera. Is it a fun watch? Absolutely not. But it's the kind of movie that makes me excited about the art again. I was watching a family violently ripped apart by grief and trauma, and I was revelling in the process of creation. A fire has been re-lit that I was afraid had burnt out for good. So if I giggled a little too loud or kicked my feet a bit too much while watching, it's not because I'm some sadistic demon. I just remembered why I love movies.