Bring Her Back is a supernatural horror film, directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, and the cast includes Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Salle-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips.
My Thoughts On Bring Her Back
Bring Her Back is the kind of horror movie that doesn’t so much “begin” as it does quietly move into the room and sit in the corner, staring at you while you wonder what it wants, where it opens with two siblings, Andy and Piper, whose lives have just been sucker-punched by the death of their father.
Piper is blind and quiet, the kind of kid you immediately want to protect, while Andy, on the other hand, is a rage-filled teenage time bomb, clearly one traumatic flashback away from punching a wall or burning something down for catharsis.
With no one else to take them, the kids are placed in foster care with Laura, a woman who lives deep in the woods, surrounded by bad lighting, worse vibes, and enough taxidermy to qualify as a wildlife serial killer.
You know the moment they step into that house that this is not a safe space, where Laura, played by Sally Hawkins, greets them with a brittle smile and the kind of overly cheerful energy that says, “I absolutely have a freezer full of secrets.”
Laura seems sweet, until she doesn’t, and her house is filled with strange sounds, odd rules, and an overwhelming sense that the walls have seen things, things they’re trying to forget.
And then there’s Oliver, the other kid living there, a silent boy who looks like he hasn’t had a solid meal or a full night’s sleep in years, where he chews on random objects like he’s trying to digest his trauma. Spoiler: you’ll never look at a toothbrush the same way again.
The plot starts to simmer with the slow, creeping dread of something that knows you’ll come to it eventually, we get no rushing, and no big scares out of the gate - just a growing feeling that none of this is okay.
There’s a dead daughter in Laura’s past too, though the film wisely refuses to spell out the details right away, and instead, her absence lingers like smoke, just enough to make your eyes sting.
Then the story turns.
Not suddenly, but like a curtain being slowly pulled back, as we start getting glimpses of old VHS tapes, chalk circles, ritualistic behaviors, and some unsettling rules that may or may not be part of a cult, or a séance, or just Laura’s personal grief-therapy-craft project gone wildly off the rails.
Either way, the kids aren’t just there to recover, as something else is going on, something older, stranger, and probably not covered in the foster care handbook.
Andy, ever the skeptic and hothead, begins to suspect that Laura is far from the loving mother figure she pretends to be, while Piper, in contrast, slowly bonds with Laura, partly out of need, partly out of confusion, and partly because Laura knows exactly how to exploit that bond.
The horror here is all pretty psychological, where it’s in the control, the gaslighting, the subtle emotional manipulation that turns Laura into something more dangerous than a demon - a grieving woman with a plan.
Laura genuinely believes she’s helping, that she’s healing something broken, and that what she’s doing makes sense.
And the scariest part? Sometimes, she almost convinces you.
Sally Hawkins is the star here in her role, where she leans into her trademark softness but cracks it just enough to let something darker bleed through, and her portrayal of Laura is heartbreaking and terrifying in equal measure - you never think she’s evil, you think she’s lost, and that makes her even more dangerous.
Billy Barratt, as Andy, carries most of the film’s emotional weight on his very tense teenage shoulders, and his performance is full of that specific teen fury that comes from being scared, powerless, and desperate to protect someone you love.
And Sora Wong, as Piper, is quietly brilliant, and her performance is subtle but powerful, showing us a girl trying to hold onto hope in a place where everything feels just a little wrong.
Then there’s Oliver, who somehow manages to be one of the film’s most disturbing and least explained elements, who doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t emote - he just lingers, chews, and exists like a question mark in a hoodie.
The film never really explains why he’s the way he is, which is a shame, because he’s clearly got a horror movie’s worth of backstory packed into that blank stare.
Was he raised by feral blenders? Is he possessed? Just really hungry? We may never know.
The final act then decides to kick things into a higher gear, maybe too high.
The last 20 minutes feel like the directors suddenly remembered they were making a horror movie and decided to unload every twist they had scribbled in the margins of the script, and while some of these work, while others feel like they wandered in from a completely different movie and refused to leave, but even with the twist pile-up, the emotional momentum keeps things grounded enough to carry you through.
What the movie lacks in speed, it makes up for in atmosphere though, as the sound design alone is worth noting, and it’s deliberately uncomfortable, where every crunch, whisper, hiss of VHS static, or scrape of chalk on tile is engineered to make your ears twitch.
There’s also some creative visual work, especially when we see things from Piper’s point of view, and the blurred edges and soft distortion give you a sense of her world without needing any clunky exposition.
To its credit, Bring Her Back takes grief seriously, and it doesn’t use trauma as a cheap backdrop, where the characters are shaped by it, broken by it, consumed by it.
It's not a crowd-pleaser type of film, and not a horror movie you throw on just for fun with friends and popcorn, as Bring Her Back is an emotionally heavy, slow-moving, and at times deeply uncomfortable, and watching it is like dragging yourself through a swamp of sadness just to glimpse something dark and meaningful lurking beneath the surface.
If you’re the type of horror fan who enjoys character-driven stories, slow-burn tension, and films that make you feel something ugly and important, you will love it, even when you don't.
But Bring Her Back dares to do something different, as it lets you sit with its characters in their pain, and ot asks hard questions about loss, control, and the lies we tell ourselves to keep going.
And it does all of this while slowly making you wish you’d watched something with a laugh track instead.
I loved it. Directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou gave us Talk To Me, which was a good film, but Bring Her Back is really good.
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