Film Review: Bring Her Back (2025)
Director: Danny and Michael Philippou
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Format: Streaming
Purchase Link: Available on Apple+
Bring Her Back follows 17-year-old Andy as he and his partially sighted stepsister, Piper, navigate an unusual foster home after their father passes away. Their foster mother, Laura, played by Sally Hawkins, is eccentric and emotionally volatile. She harbors a third foster, a young boy named Ollie, who is mute and seemingly disturbed. Right away, Andy notices strange things about Laura, who is enchanted with Piper and wants almost nothing to do with him. But he never expects the depth or intentionality of her malice.
Bring Her Back has solid pacing, moving an even gait throughout its 104-minute run time. It’s clear from the first shot that we have a cinematographer and directors who know what they’re doing. They are intentional in what they show and how, drawing on typical horror tropes to disturb the audience. The atmosphere is tense right away due to an unstable adult character manipulating and coercing the three child characters. The push and pull of the power dynamics are unrelenting and quite uncomfortable to watch.
The highlight of this movie is Sally Hawkins’ performance, which is by far one of her best. She is bizarre and unhinged as Laura, forcing the children in her care to do strange and uncomfortable things, and pressing forward in pursuit of her desires in a manic way. It’s her behavior that gives the movie its momentum.
Still, while there is so much good here, the film did not work the way I wanted it to. This is primarily because of the explicit violence against all the children, but particularly Ollie, who can’t be much more than twelve. It was ongoing, detailed, and led to his prolonged suffering. This kind of violence against children can be used sparingly and to make a point (The Boy Behind the Door is a great example). Here, it felt gratuitous. It didn’t advance the plot or characters. While I understand that discomfort is a huge part of the horror genre, it must be used to take us somewhere – to move from point A to point B. We must travel far in a film that demands this level of discomfort, and I just didn’t learn or feel enough to make the violence worth it. Even the occultist elements left something to be desired.
Bring Her Back reminded me of a less well-written Hereditary. The discomfort in Hereditary pays off in huge way – we learn, grow, and are surprised with the main characters. It is a slow building of ties, helping the reader put together the pieces of a story that has already been foretold, which enhances its theme regarding the inescapability of intergenerational trauma. There is no circle in Bring Her Back. We understand what is happening almost from the first scene, reaching an important finish line before we have even met our main characters.
The theme muddles on grief and the way our traumas can cause us to act them out upon others. But with grief, there is heart, tenderness, and longing. These feelings are largely absent from the film, and this reduced the impact of the story for me.
I wanted to like this movie so much! I’m a huge fan of A24 and find most of their work to be spot on. This one, while technically a good film, was a big miss for me. 3/5.
Review By:
Chelsea Catherine
chelseacatherinewriter.com
