Bring Her Back – Review

Release Date – 26th August 2025, Cert – 18, Run-time – 1 hour 44 minutes, Directors – Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

After losing their father, brother and sister Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong) are taken in by foster mother Laura (Sally Hawkins), however their arrival may be part of a dark plan linking to Laura’s own grief.

I didn’t know it was possible for your teeth to feel tense, however since seeing Bring Her Back a few days ago my upper fronts have been on consistent edge. The moment in question that spawns this, or rather moments, are undoubtedly behind the 18 rating given to the film by the BBFC for strong bloody violence and injury detail. Yet, much of what brings an effect to the Philippou brothers’ follow up to 2022’s Talk To Me is from what we don’t see.

One of the aforementioned moments involving an improperly used knife is built up to first in sound only as another character searches the lower shelves behind the kitchen counter. We know something has gone wrong, and can fear where things are going, but the visuals are eventually much more shocking. But, the clicks and scrapes of the build up are already enough to create a sense of tense dread for what we’ll see when 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) turns around and the camera pans back up and along.

As Andy explores the home of new foster mother Laura (Sally Hawkins), having been welcomed in alongside his partially-sighted younger sister Piper (Sora Wong) after the loss of their father (Stephen Phillips), sinister forces appear to be at play. However, they might be darker than he could imagine. Laura’s behaviour towards the pair fluctuates and Hawkins unveils herself as the anti-Mrs Brown as we see glimpses of her seemingly recreating rituals she watches on a video tape.

The other presence in the house, young foster child Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), said to be selectively mute after the tragic lost of his birth family, successfully avoids the generic ‘creepy child’ clichés as his actions eventually take him into quite different directions which provide some of the most unsettling images and details over the course of the run-time. Yet, the bloodshed and grisly images are still somewhat rare in terms of everything we see in the film. Much of the film focuses on the psychological and delves into the sinister. It brings out the darkness and a sense of suspense as Andy, and in turn Piper, find themselves more involved in Laura’s world and a plan that she may have be hatching.

Laura’s behaviour grows into gaslighting and manipulation of Andy, especially when it comes to his relationship with his sister. When entering this territory heated emotions began to emit from the film and myself, partly from the frenzy of shouts and actions happening in these individual moments as characters emotions and hidden intentions begin to come to the fore. Yet, still not everything is clear which adds to the haze of these scenes. Writers Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, alongside the siblings in the directors chairs, give us enough to go on to maximise the fear of the worst in our minds, and only give us the necessary details instead of getting bogged down in unnecessary context or backstory for the cult video clips we see.

Again, much of what works about the film is what we don’t see and how things stem from that. Hawkins performance, while a highlight in a film with a number of great performances, is excellently twisted and sets up much of the sinister and eventually disturbing events, yet she isn’t where everything stems from. Instead, successfully Laura is where much of what we see branches off from, with her own grief at the loss of her 12-year-old daughter Cathy (played in flashbacks by Mischa Underwood), who she claims Piper reminds her of.

Bring Her Back may be a film that holds back its details and focuses on what isn’t seen by the characters, but eventually that all comes to the fore in pools of blood and a good deal of effective gore. Keeping a consistent hold on the strong performances and the dark forces at work, it’s a twisted and occasionally disturbing watch that really gets under the skin in a number of scenes as more comes to light, often for the viewer before it comes close to the characters. Much of which revolving around Sally Hawkins’ brilliant, increasingly mad, and at times maddening, performance.

Visually and narratively Bring Her Back holds off on a lot of details, providing the necessary details for a suspenseful build up that grows into a dark, disturbing and bloody burst with a set of great performances, particularly a brilliantly twisted Sally Hawkins.