Bring Her Back (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.

My Take – After massively announcing their arrival on the horror scene with the critical and commercial success of Talk to Me (2022), directors Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou, for their sophomore effort, once again divulge into a grief filled spellbinding horror film that is chock full of heavy themes, real characters and terrifying moments.

Featuring an intensely disturbing performance from Sally Hawkins as a foster mother from hell, the film, co-written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, works as a slow burn descent into hell filled with visceral bloody carnage and emotional depth as it tours us around a tense atmosphere and some genuinely suspenseful moments that manage to scare without relying on cheap jump scares or tired genre tropes.

Sure, compared to their debut, it is more restrictive and simple, but it is also impressively bold and shocking in the ways how the directors continue to push horror boundaries, especially when it comes to kids, ensuring a nail-biting and grueling experience that’ll leave you wincing and squirming.

Simply told, this one is not for the faint of heart, as you will see things here that you will never unsee. It gets under your skin early and doesn’t let go as it progressively becomes one of the most depressingly miserable horror films that has released in a while.

The story follows 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his visually impaired younger step-sister Piper (Sora Wong), tight-knit siblings whose normal life comes to a screeching halt when they arrive home to find their dad dead in the shower. A traumatic moment that they barely have time to register before social services set about placing them in new homes.

But since he is just shy of months from turning 18 and applying for Piper’s guardianship, Andy requests that they be placed together. And soon enough, they are taken in by Laura (Sally Hawkins), an eccentric former counselor with a rather unusual child already in her care, the mute Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips).

However, Andy a day or two after moving in, he begins to suspect something strange is going on, and with his troubled past and sister’s limited vision, his investigation into what is happening in their new home becomes increasingly difficult.

It’s quite evident that something’s a little off about Laura, whose own daughter died some time ago, but the narrative obscures her intentions for a long time. Working again with cinematographer Aaron McLisky and composer Cornel Wilczek, directors Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou fill the frame with a sense of foreboding, even before Laura starts to behave strangely.

Each of her odd actions, which include snipping a lock of hair from the corpse of the siblings’ father’s at the funeral, is shot with chilling detachment, inviting the viewers to speculate wildly about her ulterior motives.

And over the course of its 104 minute run time, the screenplay deftly reveals just enough information to see the whole picture without fully grasping what Laura has in store or how Oliver factors into her scheme.

Most surprisingly, the script keeps the horror mostly relegated to the background. Instead, most of the tension derives from Laura’s evil machinations in her determination to see her goal through. That involves a lot of gas lighting and abuse, driving an intentional wedge between Andy and Piper, made all the more heartbreaking and vicious considering that it’s all inflicted upon minors.

While there is still a deeply emotional and brutal story at play here, the brothers don’t mind having loose ends here and there & instead, they are more after that gut-wrenching, stomach-churning horror experience as a whole. With the disturbing parts coming in both psychological and gore form. If there is one complain it would be that the film’s experience could have even further enhanced with more background information. Particularly, the rather creepy occult tapes shown in the beginning of the film.

Performance wise, the film no doubt belongs to Sally Hawkins. Her character’s calculated cunning is as infuriating as it is compelling and unpredictable. And that she can also manage to induce sympathy for Laura’s own grief speaks to her talents as a performer.

Coming in close behind her is Billy Barratt who is incredible as the teen trying to hold it together during the lowest point of his life, but failing through no fault of his own. Sora Wong, who was actually born with coloboma and microphthalmia which left her with limited sight much like her character Piper, also makes the most of her role. Jonah Wren Phillips plays a creepy kid for the ages and seems destined to pick up a similar role soon. On the whole, ‘Bring Her Back‘ is a bleak, unrelenting and emotionally devastating horror that manages to be deeply shocking and upsetting.