There’s a scene in Bring Her Back, the latest A24 horror movie from Talk To Me writer-directors (and twin brothers) Danny and Michael Philippou, that’s so violently grotesque, I actually closed my eyes to shut it out. Trying to deny what was going on on the screen just made what was going on in the theater more vivid: The moans and gags of squeamish disgust coming from the audience were almost as loud as the sound effects coming from the movie.
When you watch movies for a living — or if you’re a horror fan who’s used to boundary-pushing sequences designed to make an audience squirm — it’s impressive to encounter a scene that hits that hard. But given that it involves a young kid and some particularly intense gore effects, that first wave of “Oh noooo” pretty quickly gives way to “Wait, how did they do that?”
Polygon sat down with the Philippous over video chat to unpack Bring Her Back’s most violent, startling sequence.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Bring Her Back.]
In the Bring Her Back scene that audiences are most likely to remember and discuss (or have nightmares about afterward), a young, mute boy initially identified as Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) is displaying more and more alarming behavior. By this point in the movie, the audience has reason to suspect he’s inhabited by a demon, or by the warped spirit of a dead girl, or both. Part of that possession manifests as a horrific, inhuman appetite that keeps getting more and more indiscriminate, until he starts chewing on a knife, destroying his lips, teeth, and gums in the process. Then he starts consuming a kitchen counter, with his teeth and the wood both cracking and splintering in all directions.
“The most violent-looking scenes are usually the most fun to shoot,” Danny Philippou told Polygon. “The entire table was laced with chocolate, so he enjoyed eating it. He was still munching on it between takes.”
Danny says the rest of the counter was made up of “prop wood that breaks into little soft pieces that look like splinters,” in order to let Jonah get to the chocolate more easily. “And he had a fake mouth on as well. Fake mouth, fake table, fake wood, chocolate in the middle.”
In a Q&A after a sneak preview screening, Michael Philippou said the only traumatic part of the sequence was watching his brother enhance the sound effects by actually biting objects: “In the sound design, Danny was actually chewing on a knife. He’s like [chewing noises, muffled voice], ‘It’s gotta sound real!’ And the table — he was biting the table.”
“It was one of those things, you know — you hear the sound effect, you’re like, ‘That sounds like a sound effect,’” Danny recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah, give me a knife.’”
Image: A24 via Polygon
The knife seen in the actual shot, on the other hand, was a prop. “He’s there with a foam knife, chewing away, and then there’s a little blood rig,” Danny said. “And then we had a [prop replacement for Jonah’s head], so we could put a real knife in this fake head and rip his lip.”
“It’s such a different experience watching it than making it,” Michael said. “I think that’s what really drew us to filmmaking when we were kids, was seeing these death scenes in movies that we weren’t allowed to watch. It was almost confronting them, in a way, by creating them, or [asking] ‘How do they do that?’ That’s why I respect those older horror films that had practical effects — they look so fucking good. The Thing now still stands up to stuff [made today].”
As far as the actor’s safety and well-being goes, the Philippous had on-set coaches for the child actors to help them navigate the more emotional scenes, and Phillips’ parents, both actors themselves, were also present to work with him. (His father, Stephen Phillips, has a brief role in the movie as the father of protagonists Piper and Andy.)
But mostly, the directors say viewers shouldn’t be worried about Phillips coming away from the movie traumatized by the gory moments. “We were doing the ADR […], and he fucking loved it,” Danny said in the theater Q&A.
Michael: “He was, like ‘Oh, more blood!”
Danny: “He’s like, ‘There needs to be more blood in this movie.’ There’s a lot, Jonah!”
Bring Her Back is in theaters now.
