Netflix’s Dept. Q Review: Make Way For Another Bad-Tempered, Traumatised TV Detective

This review is spoiler free. First of all, let’s make a deal: Matthew Goode’s DCI Carl Morck is the last brilliant-but-grumpy traumatised city detective with a messy homelife that crime TV is allowed. They can have him and his crew of misfits solving cold cases out of a Scottish police basement, but that’s the lot. […]

The post Netflix’s Dept. Q Review: Make Way For Another Bad-Tempered, Traumatised TV Detective appeared first on Den of Geek.

Brothers Danny and Michael Philippou already have two feature films under their belts, and each has made a splash in the horror and indie space. Their first, 2023’s Talk to Me, used the genre staple of demonic and spirit possessions as a metaphor about filling a void with drugs, drinks, or other damnable vices. And their second film out this Friday, Bring Her Back, uses a different form of possession altogether to examine the bottomless grief of a parent who has lost her child.

Both are visceral, ruthless horror movies, which is all the more interesting after you meet the Australian twin brothers who are not yet even 35. Gregarious, hyperactive, and a pair of charmers, there’s a reason that before making the jump to narrative film the Brothers Philippou first broke into online celebrity via amusing stunt and prank YouTube videos on their RackaRacka channel.

cnx.cmd.push(function() {
cnx({
playerId: “106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530”,

}).render(“0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796”);
});

It also makes sense why when asked to chat about one or two of their favorite films and influences in an episode of our new video series In the Den, the pair’s first choice was a relatively obscure studio comedy from director Gore Verbinski that was both praised by some critics during its release for its visual inventiveness and dinged by many more for what they considered to be a mean-spirited kids movie. That’s right, their first choice is Mouse Hunt.

“Our uncle showed it to us, and our mom was so specific about what we couldn’t watch, and she was like ‘this is too violent to show them,’” Danny tells us. “And I was like ‘violent? It’s about hunting a mouse!’ But looking back on it, it does get savage at times.”

For instance Michael can quote verbatim, right down to the inflections, a scene where stars Nathan Lane and Lee Evans go mouse hunting by destroying their new home with a shotgun. After hitting everything excepts the mouse, Evans chastises his brother’s aim until Lane is now pointing the gun at him.

“There’s just something about the timing and the comedic beats of that I loved,” Michael says. “And I was rewatching scenes from it, and I’m like ‘I still love Mouse Hunt.’”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the darker edge some critiqued about the film in ’97 is what most appeals to younger filmmakers like the Philippous today.

“I love that film and feel like it’s in the same vein as Home Alone or something,” says Danny. “Like there’s that really violent, slapstick thing where back in the day, the kids films used to have a lot of edge. Like they’re throwing bricks at faces in Home Alone 2, and in this film they’re pointing shotguns at each other. It’s just something that doesn’t really exist today.”

Also a bit like both Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, it deals with siblings, whether biological or adopted, placed into an extreme situation. Michael and Danny both downplay any thematic overlap between Mouse Hunt and their own work, but are happy to namecheck another classic of sorts that they leaned into as an influence from the start on Bring Her Back.

“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane is one of the greatest films ever made, I do believe,” Danny asserts about Robert Aldrich’s 1962 psychological chiller which starred Bette Davis as a deranged child actress well past her prime.

He continues, “The performances in this film are so incredible and I love Betty Davis to death, and it feels like her whole career was building up to this moment where it felt like she would just exercise this muscle that I feel like she was getting ready to flex her entire life. There is just something about the way [Davis and Joan Crawford] acted off each other, and there was such a build up to this movie coming out where people were saying, ‘It was going to flop. It was going to be terrible. It was going to be schlock.’ And then when it came out and had these powerful performances from both of these actors, it blew the world away.”

It was the kind of titanic turn that inspired Sally Hawkins’ role in Bring Her Back as a foster mother who lost a daughter due to tragedy before taking in the film’s central protagonists, Andy and Piper (Billy Barrett and Sora Wong).

“It was so terrifying working with one of those bigger actors because we were so afraid of egos,” Michael explains. “We had an idea in our head of what that would be like, and Sally is just so down to Earth and she read the script and loved it, and wanted to chat, and from that initial conversation she was so amazing to talk to. And straight away, two minutes into meeting her, I was like ‘oh my God! We have to fucking have her, she’s the best.’”

… For prep they even decided to have a movie night of sorts by watching Baby Jane.

“One of the most magical moments of that whole production was on one of the weekends and watching Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with Sally Hawkins and talking about the performances,” Danny reveals. “She’s so good at looking at somebody, even someone in real life, and she’ll do these hilarious impersonations of different crew members. And she was able to look at those characters and mimic them and perform them, and she’s so incredible in real life and so incredible.”

Michael furthermore reveals that soon afterward, the three of them, as well as co-star Billy Barratt, decided for a gag to go ding-dong dashing at one in the morning. (Ding-dong dashing is the prank where one rings a doorbell or knocks on a front door and then runs away before the occupant answers.)

“It was in the script initially, they go ding-dong dashing,” Michael explains, “and we said to Sally one night, ‘Do you want to actually go do it?’ and She’s like ‘yeah!’” So off they went. “Imagine you’re sleeping and there’s a door knock and Sally Hawkins is running down the street.” It very well could have been an actual epiphany, because the house she did this to in the wee small hours of the morning had a doorbell camera.

“There could be an arrest warrant out right now,” Michael muses. “She’s wanted back in Australia.”

Such good vibes and fun are part and parcel for anyone who watched their older RackaRacka videos, or at least the first half hour of Talk to Me. Yet such conviviality makes the rest of that movie, or pretty much all of Bring Her Back, such interesting cinematic expressions for the pair.

“It’s a way to exorcise all those things and talk about the dark things and express them in a way that’s fun,” Danny considers. “All art is expressive and tapping into that stuff. You put them on the screen and then live nice and happy.”

It’s an interesting insight that you can see more of by watching our full conversation in the In the Den episode above. Meanwhile Bring Her Back opens in limited release on Friday, May 30 and in wide release on June 6.

The post Philippou Brothers Show ‘90s Kids Credentials Talking Mouse Hunt and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? appeared first on Den of Geek.