Year of Release: 2025
Director: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Mischa Heywood, Sally-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 6
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
The directing team of the brothers Philippou is back, following the critical and commercial success of their feature directorial debut, "Talk to Me". This time around the narrative focuses on the story of two siblings, Andy and Piper, whose dad unexpectedly dies. Though they're half siblings, they're very close, and Piper relies on Andy for a lot since she has a visual impairment which renders her virtually blind. Social Services places them with Laura, a temporary foster situation until Andy turns 18, a woman who used to work as a counselor in Social Services. Upon arriving at her place, Laura tells them she's also taking care of another young boy by the name of Oliver, Ollie as she usually calls him, who doesn't talk. Laura quickly warms up to Piper, while she's a bit colder towards Andy. While attending Andy and Piper's dad's funeral, she wants Andy to kiss the corpse's lips, which he doesn't. She clips a lock of hair from the corpse. That night they all decide to celebrate the memory of the departed, and Andy expresses the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father. Laura on the other hand mentions how much she misses her daughter, who drowned in the backyard pool. Andy keeps noticing strange events, and following a particularly horrifying episode with Oliver, he hallucinates an apparition of his father. Andy suffers a concussion and while recovering in the hospital, Laura starts dressing Piper in Cathy's clothes (her late daughter), and takes her to a padlocked shed where the corpse of her daughter is stored in a freezer. As it turns out, Laura is trying to bring her daughter back to life. She's placed a demon in Oliver's body, so they can eventually bring Cathy into Piper's body, something she witnessed from a ritual captured in these old videotapes. In order to do this, Laura has to get Andy out of the way, which she does with carefully orchestrated actions, which eventually leads to Andy going to Social Services and begging them to save Piper.
The Philippou siblings have an ability to draw believable situations and characters, progressively introducing something alien and disturbing to it, typically something supernatural related. "Talk to Me" introduced a group of friends in an Australian suburb who are playing around with a hand that puts them in touch with entities, whereas now we are introduced to siblings who are suddenly faced with family displacement as their father passes away. But as the story unfolds we understand better who these characters are, what binds them together, while the introduction of Laura, her quirks and finally her intentions also become more visible. What is so smartly nuanced about this film is the fact that the creative team makes these characters well balanced, in the sense that none of them is picture perfect, nor a completely monstrous one (even the late father to Andy and Piper). Even as Laura's dark and horrific intentions become clearer, it's also demonstrable that she deeply loved her daughter. There are narrative aspects of this film that are not quite as well resolved as "Talk to Me", namely the whole possession and supernatural aspect of the feature. But as the narrative progresses and the climactic third chapter comes around, it's engrossing to witness how far the directors are willing to take the whole experience. The film really just needed a finer adjustment from a narrative standpoint, to at least have a far more pronounced emotional impact. The cast is fantastic, with highlights going to Sally Hawkins, Jonah Wren Phillips, and Billy Barratt. The production team is solid, with highlights going to Cornel Wilczek's score. Smartly crafted and worth watching, even if not as narratively consistent as Danny and Michael Philippou's debut.
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