19 May REVIEW – ‘Bring Her Back’ is a deeply unsettling and quietly heartbreaking experience
If there’s one thing the Danny and Michael Philippou understand, it’s how to make discomfort crawl under your skin and stay there. With their 2022 debut Talk to Me, they turned grief and youthful recklessness into a supernatural punch to the gut. With their equally stellar sophomore effort, Bring Her Back, they take a more measured, colder approach. This time, the horrors are slower to announce themselves. The dread spreads gradually, thickening around you until it becomes hard to breathe.
It’s the kind of horror that trades the visceral jolts of their previous film for something more intimate and psychologically disturbing. It’s a risk, to be sure, but it pays off thanks to an astonishing central performance from Sally Hawkins that feels like watching a tragedy unravel in real time. This is a patient and uncompromising film, a meditation on grief and maternal obsession that blends reality with delusion, and it’s all the more effective for how plausible it feels.
At the heart of the story are Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger half-sister, Piper (Sora Wong), two siblings who have learned to rely solely on each other in the wake of their father’s sudden death. Piper, who is legally blind, is whip-smart and affectionate, while Andy, still only a teenager himself, is desperately trying to hold things together for her sake. He’s just a few months shy of turning 18, and until he does, the state places them in the foster care system. It’s a blow for both of them, but Andy is determined to stay with Piper and do whatever it takes to become her legal guardian. That’s how they end up in the home of Laura (Hawkins), a seemingly kind-hearted therapist whose warmth and eccentricity initially seem like a gift.
Laura lives with her withdrawn son, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a mute boy who spends his time either locked in his room or wandering the house with a blank expression. It soon becomes clear that Laura’s daughter, Cathy, who was also blind, drowned in the family pool not long ago. At first, Andy doesn’t know what to make of the woman who now acts as their guardian. She talks about the dead as if they’re still around, disappears into her room to watch strange home videos, and avoids straightforward answers. As Piper grows more comfortable in her new home, Andy begins to suspect something is terribly wrong. The question is whether the house itself is cursed by grief, or whether the real danger is the living person sitting across from him at the dinner table.
What makes Bring Her Back so effective is the way it resists the usual horror beats. It flirts with the idea of the supernatural but never quite goes there in the way you expect. Instead, the focus is on psychological unravelling. This is less a ghost story than a study of loss, control, and projection, particularly the kind that can disguise itself as maternal love. Hawkins gives a performance so layered and disarming that you constantly find yourself reevaluating your relationship to her.
One minute, Laura is making dinner and offering wise, empathetic advice. The next, she’s staring just a little too long at Piper’s face, correcting her with a strange intensity, or twisting a simple question into a manipulative game. It’s never hammy. It’s never one-note. Instead, it’s precise. She doesn’t look possessed; she looks certain. That certainty is what makes her terrifying.
Barratt, meanwhile, carries the film with a mix of simmering resentment and aching vulnerability. Andy is not an easy character to play. He’s angry, grieving, and scared, but he’s also smart enough to realise that if he doesn’t keep it together, he’ll lose Piper for good. Barratt brings a rawness to the role that’s completely believable, especially in scenes where he’s trying to reason with adults who won’t listen or hold back his temper when every instinct tells him to lash out.
His relationship with Wong’s Piper is the emotional core of the movie, and it’s handled with tenderness and authenticity. Wong, too, gives a sharp and memorable performance. Piper is funny, observant, and strong-willed, and Wong never plays her as helpless or defined by her disability. Instead, she brings a confidence to the character that helps ground the film emotionally.
The Philippous direct with restraint this time around, and it’s a smart move. The camera lingers. The edits are unhurried. The most disturbing sequences are framed in wide shots that let the actors do the work. The effect is chilling. Rather than rely on jump scares or grotesque effects, they let the unease build naturally. Cinematographer Aaron McLisky’s lens captures the foster home as a place of soft colours and natural light, making the eventual shift into psychological horror feel all the more jarring. There’s something particularly unnerving about seeing horror unfold in a house that looks lived-in, cared-for, and even cozy. When the cracks begin to show, they feel earned.
The film also benefits from a beautifully atmospheric score by Cornel Wilczek, whose minimalist compositions lean into mournful piano lines and eerie ambient textures. Rather than overwhelm the scenes, the music slips in quietly, echoing the characters’ grief and the tension between them. It’s an understated approach that mirrors the film’s broader ethos. Nothing is loud until it needs to be. When the tension finally does explode, it feels like something fragile being torn apart.
There are clear thematic echoes here with Talk to Me, especially in how the Philippous explore the destructive consequences of unresolved grief. But Bring Her Back is ultimately a more mature and restrained work. It trusts the audience to sit with ambiguity and discomfort. It trusts us to find the horror not in what’s shown, but in what’s suggested. For some, that might be frustrating. For others, it’s exactly the kind of horror that lingers.
That being said, Bring Her Back doesn’t shy away from the grotesque. In several startling moments, the Philippou brothers step fully into the realm of visceral horror here. The film’s most gruesome scenes are shocking not just for their bloodshed, but for their emotional charge. These scenes are as distressing as they are bloody, a crescendo of psychological terror made brutally physical. The violence is never gratuitous. It’s purposeful, aligned with the characters’ unravelling mental states, but that doesn’t make it easier to watch. The Philippous know exactly when to strike, often holding back just long enough for the viewer to squirm before plunging into full-on nightmare territory.
Not everything works quite as well. There’s a subplot involving Oliver that never really gets the resolution it deserves. His presence in the house is profoundly unnerving, but the script hints at deeper trauma and internal conflict that remain largely unexplored. Phillips is often a terrifying sight to behold, conveying an impressive amount of fear and confusion without speaking a single word, but you can’t help but feel like the film could have gone further with his characterisation. Similarly, the pacing in the second act drags just a touch. The film is so committed to its slow-burn structure that it occasionally risks stalling out, especially when Andy’s investigations hit repetitive beats.
Still, those are minor issues in a film that is otherwise so confident in what it wants to be. Bring Her Back knows exactly what story it’s telling. It’s not trying to be the “scariest” movie of the year, though it might still haunt you long after it’s over. Its power lies in the way it presents horror not as something lurking in the shadows, but as something that can take the shape of kindness. Laura doesn’t see herself as a villain (you may not either, to be honest). She thinks she’s saving someone. She thinks she’s offering love. It’s only when that love starts to feel like a trap that we begin to see her clearly.
In the end, what elevates Bring Her Back is the specificity of its emotional terrain. This isn’t just a film about a creepy foster mother and a haunted house. It’s about what happens when someone’s grief turns into obsession. It’s about what happens when love becomes possessive. And it’s about the quiet, unglamorous strength it takes for a teenager to stand up and say, enough. It’s an unrelentingly bleak experience, and that’s part of what makes it so effective. There’s a suffocating sense of inevitability that sets in early and only tightens its grip as the story unfolds.
The Philippous aren’t interested in comforting resolutions or tidy moral takeaways. Instead, they dig into the ugliness of loss, the selfishness that can fester inside grief, and the way children are so often collateral damage in the emotional chaos of adults. Even the quiet moments are filled with dread. A silent breakfast table, a closed door at the end of a hallway, a lullaby hummed off-key. All of it contributes to an atmosphere that’s oppressive and undeniably sad. It’s not just scary. It’s tragic. And that’s what stays with you.
At 104 minutes, the film is lean but never shallow. Co-written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, the screenplay carefully balances its characters’ emotional arcs with the rising tension. There are a few moments where the dialogue edges toward the obvious, particularly in scenes with the well-meaning but underwritten social worker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton), but overall the writing is sharp and intuitive. The Philippous are learning how to dial things back without losing their grip on the audience, and it’s exciting to see them evolve.
Bring Her Back won’t be for everyone. It’s deliberately paced, emotionally raw, and unconcerned with providing easy answers. But for those willing to surrender to its slow-burning intensity, it offers a deeply unsettling and quietly heartbreaking experience. It’s a horror film, yes, but it’s also a tragedy. A sad, frightening, beautifully made nightmare about the things people do when they can’t let go. And one that takes its place as one of the best horror movies of the year.
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips
Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Producers: Samantha Jennings, Kristina Ceyton
Screenplay: Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman
Cinematography: Aaron McLisky
Production Design: Vanessa Cerne
Costume Design: Anna Cahill
Editor: Geoff Lamb
Music: Cornel Wilczek
Running Time: 104 minutes
Release Date: 29th May 2025 (Australia)