Bring Her Back (2025) – Unnerving

Released: 29th May
Seen: 18th September

2022 was an absolutely incredible year for Horror films, one of the best that we’ve ever had. It was so good that when the time came to make my best of the year list I had no choice but to fill 5 of the top 10 slots with 6 movies (For those wondering how that works out, 2 films tied for one spot… it was a good year, what can I say!), and still had to put two more in Honourable Mentions. One of the horror films I didn’t put on the list that year was a little film called Talk To Me but let me be clear, that film was also one of the best films that was released that year. Talk To Me was an absolutely stunning original horror film that instantly put the Philippou brothers on the map as a pair of young directors to keep an eye on. While they’d had some positive response to their work on YouTube, their debut feature film really opened the floodgates to get them noticed. Of course, doing one great horror film is fine and all, but the real trick comes with the follow-up: Can you pull off the same magic again? Yes, yes they fucking can, in fact, they can go even more insane than they did before.

Bring Her Back follows recently orphaned Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who, after a little bit of begging, are being put into foster care together after the sudden passing of their father. The person who will now be caring for them is a seemingly sweet lady named Laura (Sally Hawkins), who spent her life as a counsellor but now is trying to give back and take care of kids who need her. Along with Andy and Piper, Laura also cares for a mute boy named Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips) who has a few behavioural problems, which is why he has a very set routine. Things seem normal at first but soon questions arise, questions like “Why is there a giant circle of salt around the property?”, “Why is Ollie chewing on anything he can get his hands on, including knives” and most importantly “What’s the deal with Laura’s daughter Cathy?”

Bring Her Back might be one of the most well-controlled films that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s the kind of film that knows when to push things further and how far to push them before letting everything sit and simmer for a while. Everything about Bring Her Back starts perfectly normal, depressing as hell but still a relatively normal film and it’s only at around the halfway mark when things start going to the wild territory and it never eases up after that one moment (For those in the know, I’m talking about the rockmelon scene… that’s when shit really starts getting insane). It’s not so much a slow burn as it is a nuclear explosion with a long fuse but once that fuse runs out, this film goes off in the most gloriously messed up manner.

Much like Talk To Me, the Phillipou brothers are once again using horror to tackle the subject of grief but while Talk To Me tackled that topic from the perspective of a daughter who lost her mother, this film takes the mothers side and really pushes the idea of how far a mother would go for her child. They really delve deep into this topic and play with every stage of grief, aided by an absolutely masterful performance by Sally Hawkins who manages to take this deeply damaged character and create something truly jaw-dropping. Sure, the whole cast is pretty damn incredible but they’re all being held together by Sally Hawkins who just runs through the film like she owns it.

What also really helps is that Bring Her Back is so wildly original that it sets you on edge almost immediately. You really have no idea just where this film is going to go and just when you think you’re going to be able to figure out what’s going on, the film takes a sudden sharp left turn just to fuck with you. Its ability to stay one step ahead of the audience at all times is remarkable, keeping all of its secrets close to its chest and only letting them out when it has the biggest chance of messing with the audience. The pacing is absolutely sublime, you don’t have time to really get distracted because the film knows just when to grab hold of you and start shaking because it has a new disturbing delight to torment you with. It’s brutal but it’s smart about how to use that brutality, knowing when to be restrained and merely imply something and when to just go for broke and show someone chewing on the business end of a butcher knife.

Bring Her Back is the confirmation that we were waiting for to cement the Philippou brothers as modern horror masters, their second outing has topped their first film in every way and shown them to be a bottomless pit of creativity with some truly fucked up original ideas that I can’t wait for them to unleash on the world. With Bring Her Back, these two Aussie boys have made a film that will absolutely destroy you on an emotional level before it has the time to start working on your nerves, it’s a film so powerful and intense that it feels like a miracle that it actually exists. It’s something truly original and special which is a rarity nowadays, there isn’t anything quite like Bring Her Back and thank god because I don’t think my nerves could handle too many films quite like this.