Bring Her Back Review

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Published May 28, 2025 by Travis Johnson

The team behind the smash hit Talk to Me deliver another superb supernatural thriller.

Following the unexpected death of their father, 17-year old Andy (Billy Barratt, last seen in Kraven the Hunter, the poor kid) and his sight-impaired younger sister, Piper (newcomer Sora Wong, excellent) are packed off to the Adelaide hills and the care of foster parent Laura (Sally Hawkins, who couldn’t hand in a bad performance if she tried).

Laura’s a little too touchy-feely, a little too crystal woo. But she loves kids – including her other foster, the young, silent and clearly somewhat off Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips, supremely unsettling). Plus she’s in mourning, too – her own daughter accidentally drowned in their now-empty swimming pool. Glass half full: the house, set on a remote bush block, is prepped for the unsighted. Glass very empty: Laura really, really, wants her daughter back. And she has a plan how to do it, too.

Second films are challenging – there’s a reason “sophomore slump” is a thing. But occasionally you get a Pulp Fiction or a Rushmore. And if a filmmaker (or, as in this case, filmmakers) are serious about their work, the second film is what shows you what they’re all about.

In the case of Danny and Michael Philippou, their second film follows themes they investigated with their debut feature, the barnstorming and brilliant Talk to Me. Grief is a big one. So, too, is family – and in particular the ways in which families can both help and hinder, nurture and abuse. Sometimes at the same time, which can be tricky territory to navigate. But then again maybe not – we’ve all loved someone who hurts us. It’s rough when it’s a parent, though.

So, in that respect, Bring Her Back is ambitious. It’s digging into uncomfortably ambiguous emotional and moral territory at a time when most popular screen fare clearly divides its characters into heroes and villains, white hats vs black. This is a supernatural horror movie, of course, but those elements are in the background for the most part, coming into focus every so often – a glimpse of some unsettling video footage here, an uncanny incident there. There’s a giant circle of salt carefully laid around the entire perimeter of Laura’s entire property, which clues us in that something occult is going in; some kind of ritual, whether “real” or not.

But the real story here is about abuse. What drives it, what allows it to continue, how we cope with it, how we sometimes justify it. The otherworldly horrors flitting around the edges wait in the wings while the domestic drama plays out.

Which means Bring Her Back lives or dies on the strength of its performances, and we’re in very safe hands in that regard.

Young Billy Barratt is hugely effective as Andy, three months shy of his eighteenth birthday and desperate to care for and protect his sister. He’s a fairly taciturn character, and it’s easy to imagine a take on the part that’s surly and unlikeable. However, Barratt threads a difficult needle in terms of performance His Andy is a sensitive kid barely holding it together, sublimating his own anguish into endless reps on the barbell bench.

Newcomer Sora Wong, herself partially sighted, is a revelation. Again, you can picture a version of this character that’s a lost waif – a kind of living sympathy sink for us to invest in. There’s a little of that going on, to be fair – you’d need a harder heart than mine not to fret over a blind person dropped into the middle of a horror scenario. Yet she’s a fully rounded character in her own right, capable of pettiness and selfish actions along her her essential sweetness. And of course, there’s Jonah Wren Phillips, who hits us with a largely physical performance so impactful that I don’t think he was cast so much as found living in a bog or rescued from Immortan Joe’s Citadel.

And then there’s Sally Hawkins as Laura. Hawkins is, without hyperbole, one of the greats, as convincing as The Shape of Water‘s lovelorn mute cleaning lady as she is as Paddington’s adoptive mum. She’s the villain in Bring Her Back, obviously, but an uncomfortably complicated one. She’s a manipulator of a very particular type – the type that kills with kindness. The type who uses empathy to find a vulnerable spot to plant the knife. The type who knows all the right words to say, all the right postures to adopt, to frame herself as victim rather than abuser. A DARVO queen. It’s one of those performances so good that it’s almost invisible.

And yet… was she always like that?

We’re given scant details on Laura’s past, and so we have to make a few judgements based on little evidence. She seems a loving mother, but we know – and we’re explicitly told in another thread – that such appearances can deceive. She’s a veteran counsellor, we’re told, and so you could argue that the persona presented is genuine. But the way she uses it, to drive Andy and Piper apart, to enact her horrific plan… is this a new twist? Was someone this driven, this cruel, this calculating always within her? Or did the unimaginable pain of her child’s death incubate this aspect, growing it like a cancer until the “real” Laura is a thin skin stretched taut over a monster?

It’s ambiguous, and I’m a big fan of ambiguity. It asks us what we’re willing to forgive, and how far we can extend our empathy. In fiction, we’ll forgive almost any crime committed in the name of vengeance. You’ve watched a hundred bitter vigilantes murder 10,000 mooks for the sake of revenge, with no thought as to the humanity of the dead. Here, we’re asked – not too hard, mind you – if Laura’s grief might, at a stretch, offer her the same pass.

Well, perhaps only up to the final act, when all the gore and horror you could want, having been teased for the preceding film, is unleashed for our delectation. The Philippous are consummate craftsmen when it comes to splatter, with an eye for teeth-grinding physical mutilation, so don’t go thinking Bring Her Back is some cerebral think piece dressed up ad a genre effort This is a horror movie – a great horror movie – and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. But it’s what’s under the hood that makes it great.

Talk to Me was a shock – simply the best Australian horror flick to come down the pike in ages, and a brilliant subversion of the possession story. In terms of its genre trappings, Bring Her Back is a little more rote, a little more standard issue. But these guys, Danny and Michael, they’re not just here to deliver your cheap Friday night thrills. They’re about something. They might be the most exciting filmmakers in the country at the moment. Can’t wait to see what they bring us next.