In 2022, filmmaking brother duo Danny and Michael Philippou created an instant horror sensation with “Talk to Me,” a fiendishly clever and fun twist on the possession genre that earned $91 million worldwide, becoming distributor A24‘s highest-grossing horror film. Just a month after its release, A24 already announced that a sequel to the film was in development from the Aussie filmmakers.
But instead of going full steam ahead with expanding on a nascent horror franchise, the brothers are returning instead with another new, original horror film — one that promises to be weirder, gorier, scarier, and sadder than their debut.
On March 28, the Philippous appeared at a preview screening for their upcoming sophomore feature “Bring Her Back” at Neuehouse Hollywood in Los Angeles. The duo, who are still in post-production work on the film, shared two finished clips from the movie. The first introduced the audience to the cast of the film: Sally Hawkins, playing a kindly foster mother who — as Danny introduced her — might be a psychopath, Billy Barratt and Sora Wong as her two new foster kids, and Jonah Wren Phillips as her younger, troubled foster son. The second clip teased the level of gore fans can expect from the film, as Phillips’ character sticks a knife in his mouth, resulting in so much blood that multiple audience members gasped and looked away.
After the footage, the Philippous sat for a conversation moderated by A24 producer Sam Hanson. Speaking about writing the film with co-writer Bill Hinzman, Danny said that writing on the script occurred concurrently with “Talk to Me.” The film, however, was greatly impacted by a real-life tragedy during early drafting stages, when the brothers’ cousin lost her two-year-old child. That traumatic event ended up heavily informing the direction of Hawkins’ character, as Phillipou and Hinzman became interested in the cycle of grief as a horror concept.
“Horror is a fun way to look at dark themes like that, and the idea of her never being okay ever again after that, that was an inspiration point, and how far she would go to heal herself from it, and the idea of a never-ending grief cycle is terrifying to me, and seeing raw grief like that is terrifying,” Danny said. “That just happened while we were writing, so that became part of the screenwriting process, and it always is a way to express those things, or look at those things in a funner way. Hopefully it’s fun. Probably not.”
Since both “Bring Her Back” and “Talk to Me” were developed concurrently, both films have similar reference points, especially as both deal with the idea of spiritual possession. Danny cited “The Exorcist” — which he called “the greatest film ever made” — as a key reference point, while Michael said that they used “Bring Her Back” to explore the process of grief in an even deeper way than “Talk to Me.”
“Leaning into ‘how far would you go to bring someone back that you love?’ Those deep wishes that you wonder about,” Michael said. “Translating that to the screen, I think that’s something we didn’t quite get out with ‘Talk to Me,’ so this is another iteration of that.”
Michael also said that another tragedy — the death of a close family friend — during pre-production informed the emotional headspace they were in during filming, which bled into the final project. “The grief was so raw and real and in the moment that we had no way of properly processing it,” Michael said. “There was no time to sort through those emotions and they sort of pulled themselves out into the script. Scenes that were des to be scary sort of turned sad. So that becomes part of the process as well, whatever you’re feeling at the time is gonna make its way into the thing that you’re making. So I think there’s a rawness to it that wasn’t there in ‘Talk to Me.’”
Speaking to IndieWire after the event, the Philippou Brothers discussed why they approached Sally Hawkins for the lead role, which Danny described as inspired in part by psycho-biddy films like “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” The two were drawn to her versatility, having seen her play drastically different characters in films that ranged from “Eternal Beauty,” “Blue Jasmine,” and “Paddington.” “A character actor that changes her personality so much and isn’t playing the same thing over and over, that was so exciting to me,” Danny said. “And the fact that she’d never done a full-out, point-blank horror film before either, that was exciting.”
“It was nerve-wracking for me, going to a big actor, I was so afraid of because you hear stories about egos with big actors,” Michael said. “We really wanted someone that would work with us and be in tune with us and go to those places with us and not have walls up about it or be authoritarian in any way. But the first call we have with Sally, she was so amazing, so down-to-earth. She really broke down the script, and she was talking about these tiny little character things that that we never would have even brought up in a conversation, these little nuances and how she would play them, and that’s all out that first phone call.”
Speaking about the “Talk to Me” sequel, Danny Philippou told IndieWire that he and Hinzman have two scripts for the sequel, both of which follow a different character and storyline. “A part of it is, I can’t decide which is the best avenue to take,” Philippou said.
Don’t expect him to make that decision soon, though: once the brothers wrap post-production on “Bring Her Back,” Michael Philippou is flying to Mexico to work on a documentary the two are making on the world of death match wrestling, and Danny estimated that Michael will likely spend the second half of 2025 working on the edit for that project. He, meanwhile, will spend his year working with Hinzman on another horror film they have in development, the premise of which he’s keeping under wraps. Once they finish work on that script, Danny said he intends to revisit “Talk to Me 2” and finalize a script from a fresh perspective.
“So I’d say 2025 ‘Bring Her Back,’ 2026 the documentary, 2027 [the new] horror, and then ‘Talk to Me 2’,” Michael told IndieWire. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“So when we’re like 50, we’ll do ‘Talk to Me 2,’” Danny joked.
A24 will release “Bring Her Back” in theaters on Friday, May 30.
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