A24’s newest films ‘Bring Her Back’ and ‘Friendship’ double down on weird, raw cinema
Tim Robinson’s first leading film role is here — and it’s as excruciatingly awkward as you’d hope
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I can count on one hand the number of times a corporate production company or distributor logo excited me for whatever film they were releasing. As a kid, if New Line Cinema had their logo in front of a horror movie, I was there for it. (They get a lifetime pass from me for Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and so much more.)
As an adult, if a film were added to the Criterion Collection, I would immediately check it out because their curation is unmatched in the history of home cinematic releases. But as a cinephile, nothing piques my interest more than that sexy logo for producer-distributor A24 because I know that whether the film is brilliant, hot garbage, or something ephemerally floating in between, it’s at least going to be interesting.
When they first started releasing movies, A24 had a particular mission in my eyes: to champion auteur filmmaking that wouldn’t be financially successful anywhere else. Their advertising has a very specific aesthetic and their branding and marketing feel designed for people after a singular and post-modern vibe from their media. Since A24’s first release in 2013, they’ve released over 180 films (not including TV shows) and the sheer breadth of the work is astonishing. A lot of their movies don’t even make any money, but they still push artistry over a quick and easy buck.
Once I realized that A24 was behind some of my favorite movies of the 21st Century (A Ghost Story, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Past Lives, and a half dozen more), I made it my mission to watch every film released since 2013 adorned with their logo. As of this week I’ve watched 135 of them (I still have around 40 or so to go) and I’d say I only outright despised around a dozen or so. That’s a pretty incredible ratio when you think about it.
Since their output has increased exponentially over the past couple of years (especially since winning a ludicrous number of Oscars for Everything Everywhere All At Once), the quality has dipped somewhat, but A24 is still leading the pack when it comes to championing genuinely challenging films and trying to market them to a mass audience that would prefer a little less arduous uncomfortability with their popcorn.
The past week saw the release of two new A24 weirdos: the sophomore feature from Danny and Michael Philippou, Bring Her Back, and the first starring vehicle for the deeply uncomfortable comic stylings of Tim Robinson, Friendship. While both have their share of issues, at the end of the day they both (typical of A24) champion a very specific artistic viewpoint and will remind audiences that movies are capable of being profoundly strange and uncomfortable.
Bring Her Back is a complete tonal shift from the spooky stylings of the Philippou Brothers’ earlier film, Talk to Me. While their last film had the vibe of a spooky story told by a group of friends late at night, Bring Her Back is more interested in using horror as a metaphor to explore trauma, abuse, and grief. With an Oscar-worthy performance from the great Sally Hawkins (she made this instead of Paddington in Peru), the film charts the story of a woman whose blind daughter drowned in their pool and has decided to take drastic measures to, ahem, bring her back.
While the movie isn’t as frightening as I had hoped, I still went back to the theater twice to soak in all the menacing atmosphere. Bring Her Back is a hard one to let go of, and the more I think about it, the more it hollows out the piece of me that’s always figuring out the best ways to address the broken parts of myself. It’s a powerful film, led by a never-better Hawkins, and one I’m not sure I will forget soon. If the final few minutes weren’t so messy with plotting and character, this would be an instant classic, but it still manages to be very, very good.
If you’ve ever seen an episode of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, you know exactly the level of cringe you’ll get with Friendship. Robinson plays Craig, an exceptionally average American male who struggles with making friends, being a present husband and father, as well as the range of his own fragile masculinity. When he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor (played by the perfectly cast Paul Rudd), he realizes the extremely minuscule amount of joy he was taking out of life is no longer enough to sustain him, and when that friendship sours, he refuses to go back to the man he was before finding a bro.
Writer-director Andrew DeYoung takes the film in directions I genuinely couldn’t predict and left me covering my eyes more than once. Robinson is fearless in his ability to humiliate himself and Friendship weaponizes that in a way I could hardly bring myself to watch. As the film gets sadder and darker, it simultaneously becomes so much funnier, giving me deep belly laughs with a side of guilt and self-loathing.
Your mileage may vary here. If you can’t handle the cringe of The Office or Curb Your Enthusiasm, then Friendship will break you. Every single piece of desperation for friendship and connection that we repress in ourselves is a raw nerve for Craig. He has no self-awareness, no ability to calibrate emotion, and no filter for his impotent rage. He is the loser we are afraid we are to our coworkers and all we can do is laugh in horror at our own funhouse reflection.
Both movies have their issues, but are such singular works that it’s hard not to just be happy A24 is still throwing their money at uncompromising outsider art. Take a look at a list of their films and watch the first one that sounds interesting to you. You might not like it. Hell, you might hate it and end up uncomfortable and in a bad mood, but that’s an acceptable outcome sometimes. Let A24 take the wheel. You won’t regret it.
Bring Her Back
Grade: B+
Friendship
Grade: B+
