A far more streamlined outing than the Philippou Brothers’ previous, albeit still good, film, Bring Her Back uses its hair-raising setup and gross visuals to tell a story as deep as it is sensitive in its explorations of abuse, trauma, loss and the horrifying forms familial ties can take.
Grief has been a thematic crux in many horrors since the birth of cinema, from Don’t Look Now to The Babadook and beyond. This may in part be due to the complexity of the emotion. Philosophers such as Nietzsche have explored the idea of how untreated grief can turn people into monsters. This concept is at the heart of Danny and Michael Philippou’s Bring Her Back, a chillingly atmospheric suspense piece in which the role of the parent is scrutinised to a rivetingly eerie degree.
The film starts on a bleak note as 17-year-old Andy (Billy Baratt) and his visually impaired little sister Piper (Sora Wong) discover their father dead in the shower. Now orphaned by this sudden death, Andy and Piper are taken in by the foster system and placed in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), an eccentric former counsellor who lives in a remote house with another boy she is fostering, a creepy mute named Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips). Laura previously had a daughter named Cathy, who was blind like Piper, yet she accidentally drowned in their swimming pool years ago. Laura frequently draws parallels between Piper and Cathy, sometimes even treating Piper like a replacement for Cathy.
Already, the film establishes an unsettling atmosphere and a core theme of family. Although the theme is often celebrated in more light-hearted stories—and not unjustifiably—the concept of family is multi-dimensional, depending on how those within its fabric perceive their fellow blood relatives. Laura clearly loved Cathy dearly, but, in her absence, Laura’s repackaged affections become less wholesome and more petrifying. Rather than find a healthy outlet for her grief, she is attempting to find ways to overcome it and reverse what has happened to horrifying degrees. The lingering cinematography and the highlighting of small details, such as Cathy’s fashion sense or how she wore her hair compared to Piper’s, add to the palpable unease of the premise. When Andy begins to reveal more information on the true dynamic between him and his father, previously unknown to Piper, the role of the parent and how it can become monstrous in the wrong circumstances is examined with especially terrifying closeness.
During their stay, Andy begins to notice more and more off-putting things about Laura, beyond her blatant favouritism of Piper. Most of this is evident in the way she talks about Cathy or treats Oliver, who remains an omnipresent source of discomfort throughout their stay. As Andy digs deeper into Laura’s motives, the film takes a more supernatural direction, leaning into a Frankensteinian sense of macabre. Thus, Andy and Piper must find a way to escape Laura’s clutches.
The craftsmanship evokes a profound sense of entrapment. The wide, overhead shots of the house highlight its remoteness, the presence of a strange chalk circle surrounding the property adding to that feeling of enforced containment. The bright colours of the set design feel like overcompensation, contrasting with the relative disrepair of the backyard pool and shed, which Oliver frequently visits. When the film ventures into gorier territory, the use of makeup and prosthetics is astoundingly convincing. This is particularly true of Oliver, who gradually becomes more deformed as the film progresses, transforming from a bizarre-looking child to something truly horrifying as the mystery of his identity is uncovered. Gnarly injuries and the weight of mental strife take the place of the anxiety and uncertainty that weaves through the first act. That the film is exploring trauma, similar to the director’s previous film Talk To Me, heightens the intensity of the horror and the weight of its thematic resonance.
The monstrous mother figure is not an uncommon trope in film, whether it’s Cinderella, Carrie or whatever Mommie Dearest was supposed to be. But what adds to the eeriness of the trope in Bring Her Back is how said mother is crafted with as much tenderness as horror. Similar to atmospheric pieces like Le Boucher, there is never any doubt about the malevolent intent Laura is harbouring; yet, her reasoning is where the film’s thought-provoking power comes from. As despicable as her eventual plans are revealed to be, we cannot help but identify with her grief and how it informs her monstrousness. A mother losing her child is a horror you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, and to see how deeply affected Laura is, to the point of committing unspeakable acts, adds to the terror, as we cannot help but sympathise despite our understanding of her wrongdoing. If Roger Ebert’s philosophy that cinema is a machine for generating empathy is true, then Bring Her Back weaponises that generated empathy to make its antagonist and its craft all the more disturbing and thematically rich.
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Elevating the material to something hauntingly engrossing are the performances from both veterans and newcomers alike. Sally Hawkins is one of the best in the business, yet this critic can’t recall seeing her play a character as horrifying as this one. Imbuing the role with her signature soft-spoken charisma, which only makes the character more unsettling, Hawkins captures both palpable grief and a nail-biting ability to portray gaslighting behaviour. Playing off of her are a collection of remarkable child performances, all of whom step up to the ring fearlessly. Baratt is remarkably layered and vulnerable, as his character navigates suppressed trauma, bullying, and a desire to protect that comes from how no one was there to protect him. Wong’s performance conveys the childlike innocence necessary for a premise like this, particularly as Laura exploits the character’s visual impairments to conceal her plans. Yet wee Jonah Wren Phillips might be the most sinister of all the performances. He barely says a word, but the looks he gives and the ways he physically composes himself are utterly menacing, the astonishing practical effects adding to the terror of his character’s continuous presence.
There are times when the pacing is a little off, particularly in the middle act, when Laura’s gaslighting antics are numerous and exist to generate suspense rather than move the story along. This is capped off with an ending that, while powerful on paper, nonetheless feels abrupt in execution. But there’s no denying the stellar craft and compelling thematic power on display when the film is at its best. A far more streamlined outing than the Philippou Brothers’ previous, albeit still good, film, Bring Her Back uses its hair-raising setup and gross visuals to tell a story as deep as it is sensitive in its explorations of abuse, trauma, loss and the horrifying forms familial ties can take. Grotesque and chilling yet with a well of empathy at its core, Bring Her Back is one of 2025’s best horrors.
Danny and Michael Philippou’s Bring Her Back is now showing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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