Homegrown horror: Philippou brothers feel the weight of Hollywood success

Adelaide’s high-wire Philippou brothers are in the grip of nerves over the release this week into Australian cinemas of Bring Her Back, their follow-up to the horror gem, Talk to Me.

The identical twins — Danny, the blonde one who writes and directs, and Michael who directs and does post-production — have yet to find the courage to sit through a screening with an audience. The brothers, who grew up in Pooraka using onscreen violence as their love language, like what they have done, but are not ready to find out what audiences think.

They need not worry; its US release has already drawn headlines including‘The Philippous are Two for Two’ and ‘Best Horror Movie of 2025 So Far’, and debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 95 per cent approval rating. The general conclusion in the American media is the boys have another hit on their hands.

But after the phenomenal success of Talk to Me, which cost less than $5 million to make and earned $140 million worldwide, the Philippous now have a reputation to protect. When they made their first film — released in 2023 and picked up by the Sundance Film Festival — they were cinematic unknowns coming off success as YouTubers with theirjackass-style prankster channel, RackaRacka. This time they had studio backing from indie international studio A24, a larger budget, bigger crew, and a special effects department able to implement their wildest fantasies.

“The only thing that changed for us was more pressure and the weight of expectations,” Danny says. “That was a little bit paralysing and I could feel my feet getting cemented to the ground from overthinking it.”

Bring Her Back, written by Danny with Talk to Me co-writerBill Hinzman, is set in the same paranormal playground of summoning the dead. “We didn’t feel as though we had finished exploring those themes or that the story was completely told yet,” Danny says.

But it is darker and grislier than Talk to Me, which took place among a group of high-spirited students in their house-party era. Bring Her Back is a character-driven tale of a woman enduring the loss of a child whose grief descends into ritualistic violence.

Their starting point for the script was the partially-sighted sister of a friend who wanted to navigate the world with independence in spite of her disability. In the film, Piper (Sora Wong) is a nearly blind teenager whose brother Andy (British actor Billy Barratt) plans to become her guardian as soon as he turns 18. Until then, they are fostered with Laura (Sally Hawkins) who has lost a daughter and gained a mysterious foster child, a mute boy called Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).

The brothers felt that casting Piper with a partially-sighted actor was important to the film’s integrity and Wong, who had never acted, flourished in the role as shooting progressed.

“It is such a rare thing to see on screen; usually, you have these normal people acting with contact lenses in but we wanted to portray it properly,” Danny says. “Sora came in and she just had it.”

Wong was a Sydney schoolgirl whose mother saw an ad on Facebook when she auditioned, but was able to improvise and channel a character without any training.

“She was able to feel that and portray that, so it was the most amazing thing to watch — ‘you’re an actor, you’ve got it’,” Michael says. “It was about nurturing that and making her comfortable and able to express herself as we worked up to those bigger scenes. It was the most amazing thing ever.”

"Danny and Michael will storm the world."

Their biggest coup was to cast Hollywood actor and double Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins, their first choice for the role on the strength of her powerful performances in films like Blue Jasmine, with Cate Blanchett, and The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy about a woman who falls in love with an amphibious monster. They were astonished when Hawkins, fresh from two Paddington films, said yes. Her off-kilter performance as a woman obsessed drives the film.

“Danny and Michael will storm the world,” Hawkins said after filming with them. “I felt completely supported and trusted and given the space to do what I needed to do.”

Michael says he could not believe she wanted to work with, as he puts it, ‘two bogans from Pooraka’.

Hawkins’ portrayal of a woman who presents as a bubbly Adelaide Hills psychologist with a libertarian approach to foster care is the mainstay of the film, and her trust in the Philippous says much about their appeal, and their filmmaking future. On screen she embodies, with a stripped back Australian accent, a woman who loses her bearings and descends into darkness.

“We had these amazing conversations and got on like a house on fire – it is one of the best experiences I have had working with anybody,” Danny says. “She is always Sally but underneath that is the whole weight of the character. She would go shopping as the character when she was off screen.”

The other star of the film are the spectacular special effects, which take blood and gore to extreme and horrifying lengths. Whereas the boys would once experiment with fake blood in their bedrooms, they now have an entire department to play with. The result delivers moments of screen time so ghastly it is hard to think anyone but the Philippous would even try.

"When I come home, I feel safe and supported and I can’t see myself moving out of Adelaide any time soon."

The decision to shoot again in Adelaide was this time less to do with staying in their comfort zone and more a matter of seizing on opportunities and a desire to bring as much as they can back to Adelaide. Most of the action takes place in a remote house set among the woods and it was filmed at Brownhill Creek, close to town in the Adelaide Hills. Importantly, it had a swimming pool visible from every window, which becomes a focus as the grisly drama unfolds. Everywhere the grieving Laura looks, she is reminded of her daughter’s loss.

Despite their newfound Hollywood standing, the Philippous will not be departing for Los Angeles any time soon. Talk to Me attracted admiration from Hollywood heavyweights including Steven Spielberg, Benicio del Toro, Ari Aster and Jordan Peele, and a move overseas would seem likely. But the twins, now 32, have bought a house in Adelaide and to further cement their connection to home.

They have also partnered as producers with Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings from Causeway Films in a new production house, Rackaway, which has an office in the Glenside film hub.

“It always feels good coming home, even if we’ve gone for a week or a year,” Danny says. “When I come home, I feel safe and supported and I can’t see myself moving out of Adelaide any time soon.”

Their exploration of horrors beyond the grave is now complete and they have launched into something completely different, stretching themselves again to work beyond what they know. They are making a documentary about the underground cult sport of death-match wrestling — an extreme, brutal, no-holds-barred style of ring combat that is dangerous, offers no money, and which Michael, who trained as a stunt man, engages in. They have already begun in Japan, Mexico, and the United States, US with Michael stepping into the ring with the film’s stars.

“We’ve been doing it since we were kids,” Michael says. “It’s a very extreme style of professional wrestling. It’s story-telling but with real barbed wire, real thumb tacks, real blood. We are following people who do that and are finding out what drives them to do it.”

Bring Her Back is in cinemas now