So much of modern horror is entwined with the twin serpents of grief and trauma, but the way filmmakers rely on distancing effects or project a tone of ironic detachment onto their characters often prevents the horrors at the center of their works from truly resonating. That detachment, not to mention the propensity for metaphor, endemic to the works of so many of horror’s most promising luminaries in recent years can be probing and evocative, but really it exists to allow audience to look at tragedy from a safe vantage point.

With Danny and Michael Philippou, however, you’re in the bleeding thick of it. That was as true of Talk to Me, the Australian twin filmmakers’ feature directorial debut, as it is of their follow-up, Bring Her Back, an unreservedly soul-sick portrait of grief that comes from a place of such inflamed, naked vulnerability that it becomes almost unbearable to sit with.