Bring Her Back could shock the numb with sensation. Few films have as visceral an emotional component to them. Even veteran horror hounds burnt into senselessness by gallons of nightmare fuel will easily cringe at several instances. Yet, there’s more than gore behind this unsettling story. Bring Her Back resonates on an emotional level that’s hard to lose long after the movie has ended.

​Stepsiblings Andy and his visually impaired sister Piper discover their deceased father in the shower. Reeling from this loss, the close pair are put into foster care. They’re looked after by an eccentric, though in her own way kind, Laura, who also introduces them to another child in her home, the mute Oliver. As the stepsiblings adjust to their new life it becomes increasingly clear something is disturbingly off about their foster mother. Oliver’s horrifying behavior, including self-mutilation, and Laura’s tendency to chip cracks into the children as if psychologically hammering at Andy, particularly to develop a divide between him and Piper, become more pronounced. It soon becomes clear that something very sinister is happening. 

What makes Bring Her Back so intensely affecting is the steady revelation of its main character’s intentions. Laura, played powerfully by Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), is clearly up to something devious from the get-go, yet the exact nature of her enterprise, though seemingly supernatural, only comes into focus bit by bit. This continuing dive down an intriguing rabbit hole leads to a grim revelation that is as horrifying as it is understandable.

The film gives enough sense of what may be coming at the beginning to peak curiosity. It then delivers tidbits that are often way worse than anything someone could imagine. Still, anyone able to guess what’s happening is still intrigued by a desire to see precisely how things unfold. That’s because those breadcrumbs lead the audience past insights into events, such as character motivations and parts of their past, which deepen a connection to the story. Laura is dealing with her own profound tragedy making her actions hauntingly relatable. She isn’t wicked so much as desperately broken.

​Meanwhile, the siblings, Andy in particular, provide their own heart squeezing instances of personal pain. Bring Her Back is able to then orbit themes of loss, loneliness, and abuse in profoundly affecting ways. Part of this is thanks in no small part to Billy Barratt (Responsible Child) delivering a sharply subtle performance. There’s something haunting about watching this child fall to pieces that only intensifies the gorier moments. 

Alongside him is Sora Wong making her big screen debut with affecting charm. She’s the kind of protagonist one wants to see protected, so when disquieting darkness descends there’s a real desire to root for her safety. Bring Her Back is never the kind of cynical fright flick where watchers are left cheering for the villains. In fact, there’s a strange case to be made there are no villains in this feature, especially considering the heart shredding truth behind Oliver. This nightmarish role played by Jonah Wren Phillips (Human Error) is as tragic as it is disturbing.

​Bring Her Back frequently maneuvers the audience into position through emotional resonance, luring them into relatable instances before delivering brutal blows. These can be painful revelations about the past, but they can also be flinches induced by flashes of gore. Blood may not flood; however, the filmmakers offer divinely disturbing instances that will nightmarishly linger. Bring Her Back is an admirable lesson in less is more. The use of gore here is precise and sharp rather than a sweeping shotgun stroke coating the room.

Directors Daniel Philippou and Michael Philippou masterfully craft a relentless atmosphere of dread. This is the kind of movie that leaves a watcher feeling beat up by the end. That said, Bring Her Back is a visually genius movie on multiple levels. 

There are moments where the camera is out of focus allowing the audience to experience the world the same as visually impaired Piper. Furthermore, whenever the view of Oliver is distorted, like when rain runs a river down a window, glimpses of something disturbingly inhuman can be seen. Finally, the filmmakers compose wonderfully poetic instances as some shots grandly elevate the events on screen.

Bring Her Back is everything modern horror needs to remain relevant. It is a cinematically extraordinary film. It is an emotionally affecting story that tackles several potent themes. The cast ably delivers powerful performances that enhance the dread filled atmosphere while simultaneously squeezing the heart. Overall, there are scenes that can only be described as cringes and flinches guaranteed to infect with lingering nightmares. Everything about this movie is sinister and unsettling, yet its potency stems from a relatability that makes it disquietingly haunting.
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Horror fans are guaranteed a gem. Casual fright flick viewers are encouraged, though forewarned this film is a shredder. People terrified by Disney Halloween specials—this will drive you out of your mind… so please record yourself if you happen to risk watching Bring Her Back. 

It has been quite a while. Explanations are obviously in order. The simplest is the best yet only half the story.

Everything begins about one year ago. One of my best friends died of liver cancer. His diagnosis was terminal from the get-go. Even though he didn’t tell me as much, I happen to be too familiar with cancer from repeated encounters to not glean some sense of things to come. A little light research only added fire to the fact things would be burning down around us in the months ahead. However, nobody realized that he would exit more quickly than anticipated.

Whatever expeditated his demise, he slipped out of this world (I’d like to think) peacefully around about June 4th, 2024. I drove him to the hospital the days before, and we were still making plans regarding what we’d do when he got out. Both of us believed he was only popping in for a quick bit of treatment. A day later his system went into steady decline.

Since he’d always been a fan of Beerfinger – we often joked over drinks about what band tours would be like, which of course, he would manage as road master – so I hurried to complete the last album Lessens. If nothing else, it’d give him something to listen to while stuck in the hospital. Working on it also provided a distraction for my own downward spiraling thoughts. Consequently, parts of that album are not as well produced as I’d like them to be. I’ve been tempted for a year to remove Lessens from platforms it appears on, remaster tracks, and put it back up again. Only after my friend died, I saw little point in doing so.

It took several months to start enjoying work on any of my various projects. That isn’t to say I didn’t throw myself into certain tasks. He died in June, and I basically burned out in July, taking on every creative endeavor I could think of. I wrote multiple articles for Film Obsessive, produced several short fiction pieces, and got back into doing live performances. Perhaps a bit of that cliché about life’s shortness was hitting hard at the time. Maybe I wanted a distraction from feelings of grief.

There’s no one answer because it’s a whole overlapping Venn diagram of correct answers. The Kübler-Ross model for five stages of grief is no longer, as I understand it, the accepted outlook on mourning. It’s more of a mess where people pinball from one emotion to another, and having experienced it firsthand, I feel there is some credibility to that notion. Anecdotal evidence may not be the best, yet that doesn’t stop it from hitting hard when it delivers experiences which drive you mildly insane for a few months. I didn’t realize manically depressed I was until the Fall.

At the same time, I’d been struggling with chronic pain. My back is essentially a crazy quilt of soft tissue damage stitched together by inflamed nerves. This makes it hard to do a variety of things. Playing guitar is not exactly a pleasant activity anymore, and writing can also be like inviting a hot poker to spear my back. This all sort of amalgamated into a dark cloud overshadowing any desire to make things creatively.

Time passed, as it will regardless of any individual’s situation, and though some wounds never heal, they stop bleeding enough for one to feel less drained. Physical therapy gave me some relief, reducing chronic agony to irritating aches, and life regained some sense of normality. Then around about December I started fiddling with the guitar just to have fun—B standard tuning and something just clicked.

I wrote four songs in one night. Originally, I intended to only put out an EP. However, the more I refined these tunes the more material I produced. I’ve learned over the years, especially this last one, to give myself breaks from big projects. So, the months slipped by as I gradually produced Along the Winter River.

It is not an exploration of recently past calendar pages. Though maybe it is in ways I have yet to recognize. What I do know is that the sound of this album is much better than the last. I may still pull Lessens and redo the songs which annoy me the most. That said, I’m rediscovering the joy of creating things. In some ways as a distraction but in other respects because it’s in my blood.

In the last few months, I’ve made more of a conscious effort to seek live performance opportunities. There are currently a few around the corner. I’ll be at O’Shaughnessy’s Public House performing as part of IS THIS A THING? on June 9th around 7p.m. Then over at Mrs. Murphy’s and Sons Bistro June 12th delivering nonfiction for THIS MUCH IS TRUE. I have two major short fiction publications on the way. Meanwhile, I still have regular reviews and analysis articles appearing over at Film Obsessive. Recently, I got to interview Anthony Michael Hall which was pretty cool.  

And while this may all seem like bragging, the point is that everyone falters when things get rough. It’s all about getting back up again. How you do that is unique to yourself, though don’t let anyone tell you there’s a wrong way. While hard drugs might be debatable, the fact remains that although life is indeed short there is no schedule. When it’s over, it’s over, but until then there are no deadlines. So, learn not to rush… let yourself breath… and find the way you can flow again. Maybe it’ll take you ALONG THE WINTER RIVER.

Sorry… that was a bit melodramatic. However, I couldn’t help myself. If you are curious, the album is what I like to think of as Chicago sludge. It’s a primarily hard rock driven record composed of elements akin to Henry Rollins, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and various sludge metal bands such as Acid Bath, Down, and Crowbar. Of course, influences should never be mirrored perfectly. As such, though there’s a taste of things like the Deftones in one tune, it remains distinctly Beerfinger. At least I’d like to think so.
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The first single is currently available on Bandcamp. There’s also a low-budget lyric video on YouTube—link below. The album itself should arrive on other platforms soon. So stay tuned, keep safe, and stay weird!