Bring Her Back (2025)
Bring Her Back, directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, is a rare kind of horror film—one that doesn’t rely on spectacle or cheap tricks, but instead works its way under your skin through quiet tension, emotional honesty, and a deeply unsettling exploration of grief. It’s frightening, yes—but not only because of what it shows. It’s frightening because of what it understands.
The story follows two siblings, Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who are placed into foster care after the death of their father. They’re taken in by Laura (Sally Hawkins), a woman who seems gentle and well-meaning, if a little eccentric. At first, her house feels like a refuge. But it slowly becomes clear that Laura is still grieving her own child—and that her grief has turned into something obsessive and dangerous. As her behaviour grows more erratic and the children begin to suspect something is very wrong, the sense of safety begins to unravel. What they uncover is not only disturbing, but deeply tragic.
The film’s strength lies in how carefully it handles this descent into darkness. Laura isn’t a caricature, and the horror doesn’t come from the supernatural alone. It comes from watching someone who is grieving so intensely that she’s lost her ability to distinguish love from control. Sally Hawkins is extraordinary in the role. She brings warmth and fragility, but also a kind of quiet desperation that becomes more terrifying the longer it lingers. She never overstates it; she just lets the sadness leak through every gesture and glance.
Billy Barratt gives Andy a kind of nervous watchfulness that feels utterly true to the situation—he’s still a teenager, but he understands more than the adults around him give him credit for. Sora Wong, as Piper, captures the delicate line between fear and trust with remarkable subtlety. There’s a vulnerability in her performance that makes the threat around her feel all the more immediate.
Visually, Bring Her Back is restrained but precise. Cinematographer Aaron McLisky uses light and shadow to evoke the emotional states of the characters. The house—where most of the film takes place—is never overtly frightening, but it becomes more claustrophobic with time. What once looked cosy begins to feel like a trap. The colour palette is muted and washed out, as though the world itself is grieving. Recurring imagery—especially water—suggests loss, memory, and the instinct to hold on to what’s slipping away.
The film’s pacing is slow but never dull. It gives you time to sit with the tension, to observe the small changes in tone and behaviour that signal something is wrong. The editing is careful and deliberate, heightening the discomfort in a way that feels earned. When the horror does arrive, it’s not about shock—it’s about inevitability. You feel it coming, and that dread is what makes it so effective.
Cornel Wilczek’s score is another quiet achievement. It doesn’t overpower the scenes but supports them with uneasy textures and silences that echo the emotional undercurrent of the story. It sounds like grief feels—restless, persistent, just below the surface.
What sets Bring Her Back apart from other horror films is its emotional maturity. It doesn’t turn pain into spectacle. It pays attention to what grief does to people—to how love can become something twisted when it’s driven by denial. In that sense, it’s in conversation with films like The Babadook and Hereditary, but it holds its own with a distinct tone and a clearer sense of empathy.
This is a film that asks you to sit with discomfort—not just the fear of what might happen, but the sorrow of what already has. It’s a story about people trying to make sense of a world that has become unrecognisable, and about the danger of refusing to let go. That emotional weight is what makes the horror feel so grounded, and so difficult to shake off afterwards.
Bring Her Back doesn’t just frighten. It moves. It stays with you because it recognises something deeply human: that the things which haunt us most are not the ones lurking in the shadows, but the ones we carry with us. This is a film I’d recommend to anyone who believes horror can be more than a thrill—who’s open to something slower, sadder, and far more lasting.