‘Bring Her Back’ REVIEW: Horror for a Generation That Won’t Grieve
‘Bring Her Back’ REVIEW: Horror for a Generation That Won’t Grieve
Sally Hawkins as Laura in Bring Her Back | Still courtesy of Columbia Pictures Philippines / A24
In a forest abandoned by their parents, Hansel and Gretel are taken by a witch into a gingerbread house. They outwit the witch into burning in the oven meant for Hansel and the siblings escape the sweet house, back into the father who had abandoned them at their cruel stepmother’s behest. It’s a fairy tale story that echoes around Bring Her Back, a bleak and grim horror film whose scares invite as much sorrow as they do screams.
Step-siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and visually impaired Piper (Sora Wong) discover their father dead in the shower. Now orphaned, they are relocated into the care of former social worker Laura (Sally Hawkins). Initially to be separated as Laura was only taking in Piper, Andy intends to apply for Piper’s guardianship when he soon turns 18 and is allowed to join Piper.
The moment they step into her home, Laura welcomes Piper with loving arms. The siblings also find a young boy named Oliver in the home’s empty pool. Oliver’s oddly quiet and distant demeanor easily lets Andy and the audience know that things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows in Laura’s home.
Sally Hawkins continues a long line of film tradition where an actor with a long stack of roles playing loving individuals plays a character whose actions become increasingly unsettling. Her performance balances the line between a woman who dotes on Piper and Oliver while sowing skepticism over Andy’s capabilities to care for Piper. It’s never lost that Laura’s actions all come from a place of grief since she lost her blind daughter Cathy, who drowned in the house’s pool. Laura is often seen rewatching old VHS tapes, whether it’s home videos with Cathy or spooky cult rituals.
Even though they do have their differences, Laura and Andy are two people who have similarly been passed by grief. Laura just happens to keep going back while Andy chooses to suppress himself and Piper from what it means to process difficult feelings over complicated, disappointing authority figures.
Bring Her Back is a film that constantly grieves. Before even being a legal adult, Andy is thrust with guilt and pain over his boyhood faults by his dad and forced to see himself as a guardian before he can be his own man. And before even moving in with Laura, his history is already used against him. The film grieves the environment that this generation’s children have grown into, raised by adults whose own resentments and projections bring into question whether they truly have children’s best interests at heart — even to their own detriment.
Since their first horror film, Talk to Me, the Philippou brothers have always wanted to understand how today’s children are navigating a world that’s supposedly given them better tools to connect while leaving them unprepared to face the hard feelings that come with growing up. There’s a moment where Andy and Oliver take some time to try to bond that descends into a bloody mess. It’s every bit as grisly as the Philippou siblings wring it out to be. It’s also a scene that feels more heartbreaking than scary, knowing that Andy is experiencing another traumatic event unraveling in front of him.
Billy Barratt and Sora Wong fill their characters with terrifically lived-in performances. Barratt is tuned into Andy’s boyish immaturity and the world-weariness that goes with having high expectations hovering over him. Wong, herself partially sighted and in her first acting role, is wonderful as Piper, a girl whose maturity is shielded by everyone’s worries over her condition. Jonah Wren Phillips is brutally terrifying as Oliver, though no less tragic than his stepsiblings. Phillips eats — quite literally — into his role as a child whose vacant stare and silence gives way for an irascible appetite waiting to be satiated. It’s easy to forget when you’re watching the terror play out around him why such a young child seems to be a vessel for pure evil.
The Philippou brothers’ filmmaking is maturing as they maintain a playful, visually sharp eye even as they steep themselves into emotionally heavier material. Just as Talk to Me never lets up once the ceramic hand meets its protagonists, so does the Bring Her Back’s heavy dread never lets go once Andy and Piper become orphaned.
It’s a dread that might make you wish the feeling, or the film, would go by faster. Some audiences may prefer the relentless terror of Talk to Me, but it’s clear as ever that with this second effort, the Philippou brothers have made a defining film that tries as much to understand as it does to unsettle a generation that’s becoming more creative in refusing to process grief altogether, smattering blood over people’s faces while letting the tears stream down.
‘Bring Her Back’ will screen in select cinemas nationwide on July 16th, 2025.
