Bring Her Back Review
Bring Her Back (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, written by Bill Hinzman and Danny Philippou and starring Billy Barratt, Sally Hawkins, Mischa Heywood, Jonah Wren Phillips, Stephen Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Sora Wong, Kathryn Adams, Olga Miller, Asha O’Connell, Arianny Ross and Amya Mollison.
The filmmakers of the hit horror film, Talk to Me, have crafted a truly horrific masterpiece of terror with their latest, Bring Her Back. Opening with the discovery of their dead dad in the bathroom, a brother and sister named Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) soon find their new caregiver is off her rocker and that’s putting it mildly. Bring Her Back may be something of a slow-burn which makes revealing its secrets a bit unfair, so read carefully in order to avoid minor spoilers. Bring Her Back‘s success is driven by Oscar-nominee for The Shape of Water, Sally Hawkins’ masterful performance. She has got kooky, crazy and psychotic down pat all in this one role. Filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou let Hawkins rule the show here and the results are likely to please horror fans of recent gorefests like the Oscar-nominated movie, The Substance.
Hawkins portrays Laura, a one-time mom who lost a daughter (Misha Heywood) in a tragedy and seems to plan on giving Andy and Piper a loving new home. Though the film shows the bond between Andy and Piper, and both performances by the young actors who play them are perfect, this movie belongs to the wicked Hawkins who shapes her character into something of a crazed lunatic complete with a kidnapped child called Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) hanging around her house. Laura has got a lot of insanity built up inside her because of the loss of her child that slowly unveils itself until all hell breaks loose. At the start, she lets the teenage kids drink and party with her while loud music blasts in the background. However, you haven’t seen anything yet until you watch the rest of this film.
Sally-Anne Upton plays a social worker-type named Wendy who puts her faith into Laura to provide care for the newly taken-in kids. One problem: Oliver is sticking knives in his mouth, losing teeth, ripping off skin and eating wood while sporadically talking in the interim when he appears to be somewhat normal. Laura keeps “Oliver” hidden as to not let anyone know she’s a sadistic monster in the form of a parent mourning the loss of her child and using Oliver as a portal to the past with creepy results indeed.
What’s most interesting about Bring Her Back is how it makes us understand how and why Laura went mad, yet at the same time, Laura is desperately trying to find some sort of happiness…or is she? Maybe she’s just putting spirits in bodies like Oliver’s haphazardly in an effort to recapture the love she has for her daughter. She also turns on Andy at one point as she seems ready to throw him under the bus to take the blame for the sick “stunt” she is pulling by having that possessed kid, Oliver, around. Trust me, things spiral out of control in such a way that you will not see the powerful conclusion coming. This movie makes you side with Laura in one way until the script reveals she is a total demon woman who has been greatly affected by an unspeakable tragedy.
Sally Hawkins leads the acting ensemble with one of the best performances of her career. Laura is open and vulnerable in-between bouts of being a somewhat nasty woman bent on revenge for what was thrust upon her in her life. Hawkins digs deep inside her characterization to reveal layer after layer of what a demented woman she’s become because of the tragedy from her past. Hawkins’ work here is A24 horror at its best as the actress gives Toni Collette a run for her money for Collete’s turn in the horror phenomenon, Hereditary.
Billy Barratt and Sora Wong are also quite successful in their roles within the picture. Piper is cross-eyed, but wants to try to make friends at the beginning of the picture who will like her for herself. Piper starts losing faith in her brother because of Laura’s manipulative ways and loses sight of the familial strengths the characters have secured in their shared experiences. Wong plays an appropriately sympathetic character in a complex plot that gets sidetracked at times due to the script’s very shocking scenes. Barratt is not to be overlooked and has the difficult role of trying to keep us invested in the “good” characters as to make the audience wish that harm will eventually come to Laura to put her out of her misery and set the long-suffering kids in the family free.
Jonah Wren Phillips is totally on point as the creepy kid who has to endure pain and suffering because of the body that Oliver finds himself living in while his soul is clearly not always that of his own. Phillips is a solid child actor who shines in the freaky scenes where he acts bizarrely and other kid performers may have emerged as one-hit wonders in this role. Not Phillips. This kid performer is going places and has extremely difficult and gruesome scenes that are unnerving in their excesses.
Bring Her Back is gloriously over-the-top in good ways, not bad ones. Hawkins is doing an exercise in dramatic acting here that makes us hope she will get an Oscar-nod for whatever category the studio, A24, tries to promote her in. This movie is also about the experiences of the kids featured in the story line, but it’s more about how tragedy turns a fair and loving mom into a total psychopath
If Bring Her Back is much better than Talk to Me, which I think it is, then perhaps the movie will frighten, disturb and scare the living hell out of audiences who aren’t afraid to leap into a probing and hugely successful blood-soaked nightmare. This new film isn’t perfect, though. It occasionally meanders on and too much story unfolds with extremely gruesome plot points, but that’s just for a little while. When Hawkins sinks her teeth into her role in the film’s final acts, the viewer will be thankful that Hawkins took this part. No other actress could have pulled this one off. It’s something close to a work of genius.
Rating: 8.5/10
Leave your thoughts on this Bring Her Back review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Feedly, Twitter, Faceboo