I watched Bring Her Back and I liked it. 3.5/5
–
Welcome to the Most Unhinged Foster Home in Australia
The Philippou brothers are back and still very much possessed by whatever stylish, brutal ghost haunted Talk to Me. With Bring Her Back, they trade grief-stricken teens and cursed hands for grief-stricken teens and cursed VHS tapes. The tone is still grim, still soaked in that weird blend of sweaty realism and dream logic, but this time the vibe is even more deranged. And surprisingly tender. In moments.
The setup is grim. Two step-siblings, Andy and Piper, lose their father in the first ten minutes. One minute he’s in the shower, the next he’s dead on the tile, and suddenly they’re in the custody of a woman who talks like a therapist and moves like she’s hiding something in the walls. That woman is Laura, played by Sally Hawkins in what might be the most quietly terrifying performance of her career. Her face stays soft even as her actions spiral into full ritual murder territory, and that contradiction is exactly what makes the film feel unstable in the best way.
Andy’s uneasy. Piper is vulnerable and blind. Their new foster brother, Oliver, doesn’t speak but stares a little too long and bites a little too hard. The dynamic in this house is off from the start, and the movie knows it. There’s a sick rhythm to everything. A pulse that starts slow, then picks up, then refuses to stop once the ritualistic floodgates open.
Grief is a Monster in Mom Jeans
This isn’t just a haunted house movie. It’s a story about grief metastasizing into something grotesque. Laura isn’t just trying to replace her dead daughter. She’s trying to dig her up, stuff her soul into the body of another child, and pretend like it’s fine as long as she hears the word “mum” again.
The horror builds slowly at first. We get hints — stolen hair from a corpse, an ominous boundary line on the property, a mute kid suddenly whispering “help me.” But then it takes a hard left turn into resurrection rituals and pool drownings, and once it gets going, it doesn’t stop for breath.
The ritual is a VHS-recorded nightmare. Bodies fed to vessels. Souls transferred through blood and violence. Piper is being groomed to die in the same way Laura’s daughter did, because in this ritual, the cause of death has to match. It’s such a messed-up logic that it becomes believable. And the Philippous are experts at making the unbelievable feel tangible. The VHS grain. The damp lighting. The way the pool water looks pitch-black even during the day. It all works.
Andy, Piper, and the Demon Child
Billy Barratt as Andy is a standout. He plays it quiet, angry, and deeply guilty, which is exactly what this character needs. Andy is carrying a history of abuse and silence that eventually cracks under pressure, and watching him try to protect Piper without understanding what’s even happening is heartbreaking. Sora Wong is great too. There’s a vulnerability to her performance that feels natural, never forced.
But the real surprise is Jonah Wren Phillips as Oliver, or technically, as Tari, the demon riding shotgun inside his body. This kid gives a performance that’s all twitch and stare until it’s suddenly something more feral. Watching him gnaw on furniture or shriek mid-possession is genuinely uncomfortable, which is a compliment in this genre. Even when the movie leans into its more grotesque moments, it never feels like it’s trying to be edgy just for the sake of it.
What Works, What Slips
The emotional core of Bring Her Back works better than it probably should, considering how absolutely deranged the plot gets. The trauma feels lived in. The grief isn’t just backstory — it drives every choice, every scream, every hallucination. But not everything lands.
There’s a bit of tonal overload in the third act. It tries to balance raw emotion, supernatural chaos, and shocking violence all at once. It mostly pulls it off, but there are cracks. Some moments feel like they belong in a different movie. The final confrontation at the pool is intense, but the resolution wraps up fast. Too fast, given everything that came before it. And while the VHS ritual is a cool visual hook, it feels like a shortcut sometimes — horror by way of home video creepiness, rather than fully fleshing out the rules of the world.
Final Thoughts
Bring Her Back is messy. It’s deeply upsetting. It’s also really good. It doesn’t hit the same clean highs as Talk to Me, but it’s not trying to. It’s murkier, more emotional, and a little harder to pin down. You can feel the directors stretching, experimenting, throwing everything at the wall just to see what sticks.
Some of it does. Some of it doesn’t. But I’d rather watch a horror movie swing for the dark, blood-soaked fences than one that plays it safe. And for all its uneven moments, Bring Her Back earns its scares, its sadness, and its screams.