Bring Her Back review: Brace yourself for this disturbing horror
Sibling directors Danny and Michael Philippou made a splash in the horror genre with their 2023 supernatural smash Talk To Me, and they’re already bringing us new nightmare fuel with Bring Her Back.
The film follows 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his visually impaired younger stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) after they are sent to live with fosterer Laura (Sally Hawkins) following the death of their dad. Laura is grieving the loss of her daughter, Cathy, who was also visually impaired, and she has terrifying plans for her new foster children.
From the moment they arrive, you can sense there’s something off about Laura. You know there’s something not right in that house, and that feeling of unease just builds and builds. It doesn’t help that her other foster kid, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), is a creepy mute who has to be locked in his room. But it gets even worse when Laura wages psychological warfare against Andy, trying to discredit him before he turns 18 and tries to become Piper’s guardian.
For a long time, the horror comes from the unnerving and chilling atmosphere and trying to figure out the reason for Laura and Oliver’s disturbing behaviour. But then it gets into full-blown body horror territory that is really disgusting and bloody. You can’t unsee some of this horrifying imagery! I watched some of the most gruesome stuff through my fingers. The fact that the body horror involves a young boy makes it all the more shocking.
There have been many terrifying kids throughout horror cinema history, and Phillips definitely deserves to be added to a best-of list because he freaked me out. Plus, he’s an absolute champ for putting himself through some of the more physical moments in the movie. But the star of the show is, of course, Hawkins, who plays such a good psycho! We’ve seen her play plenty of off-kilter characters over the years, but Laura is totally unhinged.
The story doesn’t pan out the way I expected. While I appreciate unpredictability, I didn’t love where the arc ended for one of the characters (I won’t spoil which), and I felt underwhelmed by the overall ending. I would have given it four stars otherwise.
Superior to Talk To Me, Bring Her Back is another memorable supernatural horror from the Philippou brothers.
In selected cinemas now, before wider opening on Friday 1st August