Bring Her Back (dirs. Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou)

by Jack Martin | Jul 22, 2025

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 104 mins

UK Distributor: Sony Pictures

UK Release Date: 26 July 2025

WHO’S IN BRING HER BACK?

Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally Hawkins, Sally-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips, Mischa Heywood

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Danny Philippou (director, writer), Michael Philippou (director), Bill Hinzman (writer), Kristina Ceyton and Samantha Jennings (producers), Cornel Wilczek (composer), Aaron McLisky (cinematographer), Geoff Lamb (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Two siblings (Barratt and Wong) come under the care of a foster mother (Hawkins) with sinister intentions…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON BRING HER BACK?

If you imagine you’re a kid whose circumstances have caused you to wind up lost within the foster system, suddenly the prospect of being placed under the care of a complete stranger is no doubt a scary one. Nine times out of ten, your fears are often dashed away by their kindness and genuine care towards you, but initially there’s that lingering thought in the back of your mind that your newly designated foster parent, as warm and cuddly as they may seem, might actually be the very worst person you could end up with.

There have been a handful of horror movies which have tackled this fear head-on, but very few (if any at all) have perhaps gone quite as extreme as Bring Her Back, a deeply unsettling blend of juvenile paranoia and supernatural chaos that not only confirms Australian director brothers Danny and Michael Philippou as the real deal when it comes to all-out terror, especially after their striking debut Talk to Me, but is also bound to become the go-to example of what foster children have nightmares about when it comes to their prospective new guardians.

The film, which Danny also co-wrote with Bill Hinzman, begins as 17-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind younger step-sister Piper (Sora Wong) discover their foster father dead in the shower, and since Andy is still too young to apply for guardianship of Piper, they are promptly delivered to the home of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former therapist who is also currently looking after a strange young mute boy named Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips). Though initially warm and friendly – at least, to Piper – Laura is still mourning the death of her own blind daughter Cathy, who drowned in their pool some years prior, and in her grief she has found solace in a collection of VHS tapes recorded by a sinister cult – as you do – which detail a disturbing ritual that could, under the correct circumstances, resuscitate Cathy’s soul. Unfortunately, that puts both Andy and Piper in her demented crosshairs, and don’t even get me started on poor young Ollie, who’s become prey to something far more terrifying.

As with Talk to Me, the Philippous go hard with their own signature brand of horror, pulling no punches when it comes to delivering some utterly gruesome and wince-worthy violence that you genuinely won’t expect to see, not even in a film like this. The directors are relentless in their gnarly vision, in which they make clear that nobody, including and especially children, is safe from harm as they refuse to shy away from scenes of shocking physical and psychological abuse, as well as self-mutilation so graphic that it’s a mini-miracle that it was allowed to even be filmed. Only here will you find imagery wherein someone chews on a hard wooden table, as well as a carving knife, with enough blood and loose teeth to leave you with a bit of an upset stomach, and the filmmakers capture it all with stylishly bleak cinematography and unnerving sound design that makes even the much gentler pitter-patter of rain seem menacing.

But as nasty as the horror can get, Bring Her Back also contains enough of an emotional wallop to avoid taking things into overly mean-spirited territory. The movie spends a considerable amount of time exploring the complex levels of grief, hardly a new concept within the horror genre but nonetheless is handled intimately here, as the directors focus greatly on the tragedy within its main characters as they each deal with varying aspects of trauma, with one struggling to get in the shower considering that’s where an early tragic incident happened. It gets to a point where you even feel sorry for Sally Hawkins’ Laura, for as frighteningly deranged as she can be – something made more effective by the actor’s all-encompassing central performance – you do understand how much she is grieving for her to make the extreme decisions she makes, however harmful or even fateful they may be. The Philippous, perhaps on a slightly less successful note than Talk to Me, balance the hard-hitting human drama with the much more frightening supernatural elements as evenly as they can, giving you characters you can easily sympathise with and/or be terrified of, in addition to horrific imagery that can at the best of moments feel made from the same material as nightmares.

You can certainly appreciate the lack of boundaries that the Philippous seem to have when it comes to depicting aspects of horror that few of the much more seasoned genre filmmakers would even dare to tackle, and Bring Her Back is further proof that these are directors who love horror cinema through and through, and are more than willing to take greater risks in their overall content. Although, when it comes to pairing their two (thus far) features, Talk to Me is overall the stronger movie because it carries a concept that’s much fresher and more interesting, whereas this one is treading somewhat familiar ground, even if it is executed with aplomb. There are also some points in the narrative where you do find yourself questioning how gullible some people must be to consider Hawkins’ Laura to be a suitable guardian, since even before it’s established that she’s nuttier than a Snickers bar, this is someone who flaunts a taxidermized dog like it’s something she won in the world’s weirdest raffle, and casually keeps taking her youngest ward out into the shed in the middle of the night for reasons that only later become apparent. Regardless of her true motivations, it makes little sense that anyone would entrust her with two vulnerable children, one of them being blind, in the first place.

Luckily, though, much of the rest of Bring Her Back is terrifyingly intense enough to forgive some of its less logical parts, for you’re very much along for a haunting ride that the Philippous are more than able to guide you through.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Bring Her Back is another impressively horrific entry from the Philippou brothers who, albeit not quite as successfully as their debut feature Talk to Me, go all-out with nasty and truly gruesome horror that’s balanced out by a firm emotional centre.