Exorcism or Exoticism?: What ‘Bring Her Back’ Does to the Russian Language
Where’s the line between diversity and exoticism? Between representation and plain cultural appropriation?
Back when I was still a journalist in Moscow, I once found myself at the center of a social media storm surrounding the release of Supernova—a quiet queer drama about an elderly gay couple, played by Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. Neither actor identifies as queer, and we didn’t know much about the director, Harry Macqueen, either. My call for a conversation around this didn’t sit well with everyone. On one hand, I was supposed to be grateful—any representation of my community on screen, especially of an aging queer couple, was rare and needed.
But on the other, I felt strangely assaulted. Like something deeply personal, the source of my vulnerability had been taken from me and turned into a narrative device by someone else. It felt like queer-baiting—packaged empathy without lived experience.
I experienced something eerily similar watching Bring Her Back, the highly anticipated sophomore feature from the immensely talented and craft-obsessed Philippou brothers—filmmakers I genuinely admire. The film, built around a satanic ritual that allows the dead to be resurrected, opens with a moment that caught me completely off guard: Russian speech. A literal step-by-step resurrection ritual delivered through grainy, obscure footage, watched over and over by Sally Hawkins’ grieving mother. The voices on the tape? Clearly Russian. Clearly recorded by people like me—brothers and sisters in blood and language.
Also Read: The ‘Friday the 13th’ Movie I Want To See As A Disabled Person
Hearing my mother tongue on the big screen should have been a powerful moment. But instead, it felt off. Disorienting. There I was, in Los Angeles, the heart of American film culture, watching a British actress playing an Australian mother navigate Slavic mythology in a film made by two Australian directors. And I couldn’t help but ask: why?
As Bring Her Back unfolds, the Russian language ends up adding very little to the mythology the Philippous are building. From what I gathered, they don’t have any known Eastern European heritage. And their protagonist (or antagonist —this broken, desperate mother mourning her daughter—has no narrative connection to the Slavic world, either. The Russian wasn’t rooted in anything. It wasn’t specific. It wasn’t earned. Instead, it felt like aesthetic dressing—mysterious, foreign, spooky. In other words: exoticism. And as a Russian speaker, I felt a little—just a little—wounded.
(And in case you’re wondering, I had zero issues with Sean Baker’s Anora. That’s how you use the Russian context meaningfully.)
Also Read: ‘Angel, Angel, Down We Go’: How A Horror Musical About Sky Diving Death Cult Predicted America in 2025 [Celluloid Purgatory]
So again: where’s the line between representation and exploitation?
Maybe this wouldn’t even be a question if Bring Her Back had given us a bit more—more backstory to its satanic cult, or more emotional precision in its central grief narrative. If we were rooting for the characters with our whole hearts—if the ending landed with either catharsis or devastation—then maybe those creepy VHS resurrection tapes wouldn’t matter so much. Then maybe the wildly cool, grotesque, practical horror moments (which are stunning, by the way) would stand as thrilling punctuation marks to a story that hit deeper.
But in the version of the world the Philippous gave us, I walked away not shaken, but disappointed. No exorcism for today’s feature presentation, folks. Just exoticism.
Categorized: Editorials
