Bring Her Back (2025) Review — Grief-Soaked Horror That Never Lets You Look Away

Horror doesn’t just show you the monster; sometimes it makes you feel the weight that created it.

A Sophomore Effort Bathed in Sorrow

Danny and Michael Philippou exploded onto the scene with Talk to Me (2023). Their follow-up, Bring Her Back (2025), arrives with bigger ambitions and far darker intentions. Where their debut flirted with party-fuelled possession thrills, this new film dives head-first into grief horror, showing how bereavement can metastasize into cruelty, obsession and supernatural transgression.

The story’s foundation is brutally simple. Teenager Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger stepsister Piper (newcomer Sora Wong), who is legally blind, discover their father dead in a shower accident. Because Andy is still three months shy of adulthood, both teens are placed in emergency foster care with Laura (Sally Hawkins), a quirky counsellor whose own child drowned the year before. Laura’s suburban home, ringed by a chalk circle and haunted by mute foster boy Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), becomes the crucible in which Andy’s instinct to protect Piper collides with Laura’s desperate, occult plan to resurrect her daughter. From the first frame, every hallway feels like a trap and every motherly smile hides a knife.

Readers who want an overview before plunging deeper can consult the Bring Her Back page on What’s After the Movie where you’ll find a summary, interactive quizzes and curated links to outside coverage.

Violence That Hurts for a Reason

One critique of Talk to Me was that its nastiest shock felt isolated. The Philippous respond here with a relentless escalation of flesh-ripping practical effects that refuse to play fair with audience nerves. Heads split, teeth shatter, and a notorious measuring-cup sequence has already become horror-Twitter legend. Yet none of this gore is gratuitous; every torn ligament externalizes psychological wounds. Andy’s body becomes a canvas for a lifetime of unspoken fear, while Piper’s vulnerability turns ordinary kitchenware into torture devices.

Viewers sensitive to self-harm, child endangerment or viscera should tread carefully. For genre veterans, the film’s commitment to showing, not cutting away, will prove cathartic—if also stomach-churning.

Sally Hawkins: Paddington’s Mum No More

Although Bring Her Back showcases startling work from its young leads, the film ultimately belongs to Sally Hawkins. As Laura she weaponises the warmth she displayed in Paddington and The Shape of Water, transforming it into predatory need. Her performance oscillates between giggly hospitality and abyssal grief so seamlessly that the audience is never sure when the kindness curdles into menace. During an impromptu whiskey “wake,” her gleeful encouragement of underage drinking feels almost wholesome—until she hands Piper a stuffed dog without explaining it’s taxidermy. Hawkins keeps Laura human enough that we can almost empathise with her desperation, which only sharpens the tragedy when her love turns lethal.

A Sibling Bond That Anchors the Horror

Barratt and Wong craft one of the most authentic sibling dynamics in recent memory. Their private code word—“Grapefruit” means “tell me the unvarnished truth”—sketches years of shared trauma in a single beat. Wong layers tactile curiosity and steely independence into Piper’s every gesture, honouring her own real-life visual impairment. Barratt, meanwhile, wears grief like bruises under his eyes; his determination to shield Piper becomes the emotional engine that keeps the audience invested long after the film turns merciless.

Sound, Light and Skin: The Craft Behind the Cruelty

Technically, the film is a masterclass in sensory assault. Makeup artists create wounds that look medically convincing, while cinematographer Aaron McLisky often frames Piper’s point of view in soft shapes and smeared colours, forcing us to inhabit her disorientation. The sound mix fills rear channels with yowling cats, sloshing pool water and Oliver’s ragged breath, making the theatre itself feel complicit. Even the lone pop needle-drop—The Veronicas’ “Untouched”—erupts like a fleeting memory of teenage normality before the story plunges back into shadows.

Themes: When Grief Becomes Theft

The Philippous join the ranks of Hereditary and Relic in treating sorrow as a supernatural catalyst, yet they push the idea further by suggesting that mourning can mutate into robbery. Laura doesn’t merely miss her child; she intends to rewrite reality so that the loss never occurred, regardless of who has to die. The film thus doubles as a brutal critique of parental entitlement and a warning about the seductive logic of resurrection myths.

Comparing the Philippous’ Two Nightmares

While Talk to Me delivered a giddy possession high tempered by tragedy, Bring Her Back offers no similar release valve. Its tone is relentlessly oppressive, its violence markedly harsher, and its hope factor nearly nonexistent. If the brothers’ debut asked how far teens will chase a dangerous thrill, their second feature asks how far adults will sink when the worst has already happened. The evolution is cleaner craft and deeper despair—a trade-off that many horror aficionados will consider a net gain.

Where to Gauge the Wider Conversation

Curious about broader reactions? The evolving Tomatometer can be found on Rotten Tomatoes, aggregated critic scores reside at Metacritic, and lively user debates fill the comment threads on IMDb, TMDB and Letterboxd. Box-office watchers should bookmark Box Office Mojo, while streamers can track future availability through JustWatch. For ticketing, Fandango maintains updated showtimes. Each platform offers a slightly different lens; together they build a fuller portrait of a film already dividing audiences.

Final Verdict

Four-and-a-half severed VHS sleeves out of five. Bring Her Back is harrowing in ways that transcend mere shock. Hawkins delivers a performance for the genre ages, and the Philippous confirm that their breakout success was no fluke. If your idea of great horror leans toward feel-bad masterpieces that linger long after the credits, this is essential viewing.

When you emerge from the darkness, head to the What’s After the Movie blog to keep the conversation going. Our dedicated page—complete with a summary, quizzes and curated links—awaits you at the link below:

👉 Explore Bring Her Back on What’s After the Movie

The projector may stop, but the echoes of this film’s grief-soaked nightmare will keep whispering. That’s where we come in.