under review

Bring Her Back (2025) follows a brother (Andy) and his mostly blind stepsister (Piper) as they move into the home of their new foster mother after their father’s passing. In this isolated house in the woods, one of them soon realizes that not everything is as peaceful as it seems. Directed by Michael and Danny Philippou, Bring Her Back is set in the same cinematic universe as Talk to Me (2022). While the plots aren’t directly connected, both films explore themes of grief, loss, and the desperate lengths we might go to for a loved one.

I went into this film with no prior knowledge of the plot, and I recommend you do too. It’s one of those rare horror films that manages to be both gripping and emotionally affecting. As of now (June 2025), it’s not yet available to stream, so I suggest catching it in theaters while you can.

Reading ahead

Now that we’re in the “Reading Ahead” section, here’s a spoiler-heavy synopsis of the film:

Premise
After their abusive father dies (the cause of death is unclear, but I believe I recall Piper saying something like “they said he was in remission” off-screen, so perhaps there were some health issues related to cancer that caused the father’s death), 17‑year‑old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) enter foster care. Their caseworker, Wendy, places them together with Laura (Sally Hawkins), whose own daughter (Cathy, also blind) drowned to death not too long ago. Laura has another foster son, Oliver, who has been selectively mute since Cathy’s death.

Life with Laura
Before Andy and Piper are placed in Laura’s care, Wendy shares that Laura does not wish to also foster Andy, and is only interested in caring for Piper. Wendy notes that this is because Andy has a history of acting out. Nonetheless, Andy and Piper are both invited to stay with Laura. Andy has plans to file for guardianship for Piper upon turning 18, which is three months away. Considering Laura intended to keep Piper in her care indefinitely, this creates a rift between the characters early on. Laura continually gaslights Andy, making it seem like he wet the bed and twisting Piper’s perception of him. Throughout the first half of the movie, we see Laura watching strange tapes in her room which depict an occult ritual involving corpse consumption and possession. She often watches these tapes with Ollie beside in the room, trying to replicate the moves she sees cultists using onto Ollie.

Revealing the Ritual
The tapes show a possessed figure consuming a corpse and vomiting it into another person’s mouth; this is the process thought to transfer a soul. Laura aims to use this ritual to resurrect her daughter Cathy—whose frozen body she keeps hidden—by killing Piper in the same manner she died (drowning in the pool) and using Ollie as the vessel to do so. Later in the movie, Andy finds a missing person flyer with Ollie on it, except he has longer hair and is identified as “Connor Bird.” In fact, the first scene of the movie is a clip of the occult tape, which shows a woman being hanged and then ‘resurrected’ through a host by way of the demonic vessel. Then, before cutting to black, the tape zooms into a young person with the distinct birthmark under Ollie’s right eye, but with longr hair, thus preluding his own possession.

As the ritual approaches, Ollie becomes increasingly grotesque — distended belly, his head becomes more and more misshapen and deep cuts appear across his body as a result of him biting himself, Laura, trying to eat the house cat — while Andy rushes to the social services office to expose Laura.

The Violent Climax
Laura discovers Andy and Wendy coming to investigate. She kills Wendy, runs over Andy, and drowns him in a shallow puddle outside in the rain. She traps Piper, begins the drowning ritual, and orders Ollie to begin eating Cathy’s frozen body, which she has kept in an outdoor freezer, to vomit up into Piper’s mouth — as dictated by the occult procedure.

Just before Piper drowns, her invoking “mum” triggers Laura’s maternal instincts and causes her to hesitate. Piper escapes after a tense struggle and is rescued by passersby in the road. Ollie/Collin reemerges free of possession, while Laura floats in the pool, either dead or actively bleeding to death, clutching Cathy’s mutilated, decomposed corpse.

Final Moments
The film closes on Piper hearing an airplane — referencing Andy’s earlier metaphor death — which gives her a moment of quiet hope, spiritual closure, and realizing her own resilience and survival.

Analyzing the Film

Within the past decade, there have been a surge of horror movies that investigate themes of grief and loss — The Babadook, Midsommar, Hereditary, just to name a few notable titles. The horror here is not just supernatural, but deeply personal. Everyone experiences loss. When horror is grounded in something universally human, it resonates deeply. Bring Her Back continues this tradition while also tapping into something uniquely disturbing.

In the beginning of the film, Andy finds his father unconscious in the shower, blood trailing from his skull, sprawled and vulnerable. It’s a haunting image—and later, we learn that this same bathroom was the site of Andy’s childhood abuse. The sound of the shower, once used to mask violence, now falls onto a lifeless body. In this moment, Andy sees his father: parelleling his body from countless beatings. That visual echo returns when Andy himself dies face-down in a rain puddle. These motifs—water, silence, powerlessness—persist. This is even more powerful, as we see Andy recoiling at any similarities Laura notes he has with his father, including his anger and abusive tendencies.

Outside of these interesting parallels, what I really love is that the story and context of this story does not end when the film does. The movie makers created a companion website that’s supposed to mimic a dark web marketplace (https://www.blackangeltapes.net) with cursed items and tapes available for viewing and bidding (but not really for sale). Interestingly, one of these items includes the full possession tape that you see clips of throughout the movie, which Laura watches to keep Ollie subdued. Moreover, there’s a part of the movie in which Ollie has become increasingly violent and attacks Laura. To sedate him, she sits oppposite of him with a window pane between them and begins to make crescents onto the glass using the blood running from her arm. During the movie, it’s unclear why Laura does this, or why this calms Ollie down. However, in looking at the comments of the “Tari Possession Tape” listing on the faux dark marketplace, there’s a commenter/purchaser with the username “Pompom” (which you can assume to be Laura, since she has a taxidermied pomeranian dog in her home) who asks excessive questions about how to control and handle the spirit. Pompom asks the seller how to keep the seller subdued, in which they reply, “Try like 10 waning cresent movements but only anticlockwise. That should keep it still for abit.”

The seller grows more disgruntled in their back-and-forth, considering Pompom is obviously mishandling Tari. But in their conversation, more aspects of the movie make sense. The events of the movie occur over the span of a few weeks, considering that they attend the father’s funeral, the school knows Laura by name, and the children start adapting to life with their foster mother. However, the seller on the Tari Possession Tape listing notes that Tari’s host should be starved for three days and then be fed the body that the recipient wishes to resurrect with the new host body (who would be Piper) as soon as possible after. This now provides more context as to why Ollie’s physical body grows increasingly grotesque and he becomes more irritable — the seller on the listing even notes that, “the longer you keep it, the angrier/ hungrier it will get.”

An interesting side note: Of the other listings on the black marketplace is one for a missing “Demonic Embalmed Hand” — the same one that appears in the Philippou(2) movie, Talk to Me, further solidifying the connection between the two films in this cinematic universe. It makes you wonder the signifance of the other spooky listings on this site: Do these directors intend to continue updating this marketplace as they expand the universe with related movies? Will we see these cursed products featured in later horror movies from the directors?

While these comments help to contextualize some plot points, they also raise more questions about the ritual and Laura’s incompetence itself: If Tari was only supposed to eat the flesh of the desired ‘resurrectee’ and immediately vomit into the mouth of the new host, were her efforts futile after the first instance of Ollie biting or feasting on the flesh of someone else? When Ollie bites a chunk of Laura’s arm, there’s an unnerving scene of Laura locking herself in the bathroom, heaviliy bleeding and crying out in pain, while Ollie mimics her exact voice and cries on the opposite side of the door. Then, later in the movie after Andy is drowned by Laura, she drags his body into the house and lays him on the bathroom floor (again, paralleling his father’s death), the aftermath of which you can see inside of the house after Piper is brought home from school. Offscreen, Andy calls out to Piper and she follows after. Of course, we know that’s definitely not Andy, but as Piper approaches her brother’s voice, we see a bloody Ollie in the blurred background. Again, Tari has feasted on flesh that was not the body of the intended resurrectee and has not immediately expelled the blood into the host body.

Despite everything Laura does — manipulation, murder, child endangerment — it’s hard to see her as purely evil. Her grief twists her into something unrecognizable, but there’s always a flicker of humanity. When Laura uses her own blood to draw calming sigils, an act that, while horrifying, shows how far she’s gone to maintain control of something she never truly understood.

It’s these little moments, unexplained in the film but expanded on through the website, our understanding of Laura deepens. She’s not a cultist by trade. She was once a social worker, a single mother. But grief hollowed her out, and she clung to something dark in a desperate bid remedy something that is irremediable.

I’ve read feedback and reviews from folks who were upset by the missing context within the movie itself. I wouldn’t say that these plot points are necessarily not included on purpose; we’re watching one view of one story. We wouldn’t know the intricacies of the ritual, nor how Laura became involved with the occult. It’s not like the website makes any if this abundantly clear anyways. Even so, the movie still functions well without the supplemental website. You still get the main themes and plot of the film without knowing the more chilling details. I’m the type of fan that likes to do my own deep dives after I watch a movie in its entirety — mostly, when I either really like it or really hate it. So, I didn’t mind having to dig up some dirt on the film’s context myself. In fact, I think it’s kind of rewarding! I guess you’re a similar type of fan, considering you’re reading a reviewing of it now (how meta)!

I also love that this is a reasonable length! Let’s be real with each other: Why is every other horror movie that’s been released the past few years always over 2 1/2 hours long?! If it’s warranted, sure, I get it. However, the extra hour is oftentimes not necessary. Many modern horror movies really struggle to evoke discomfort or sow actual fear into their audience, and feel the need to rely on cheap scares and/or unnecessary gore to get to that point. With these added scenes with no substantive additions to the actual story, the viewer is subject to watching countless scenes that say nothing, and only function to prove just how edgy the director and producing team are. Don’t get me wrong: gore is great in horror, but I think it should be warrented (for the most part). There are exceptions, though — for instance, when there’s just an obviously camply movie that only exists to offer exaggerated kills and fake body parts flying off an undeserving victim. However, I’m sure most directors and writers would not want their art to rub viewers that way! Bring Her Back definitely does not fall into that catgory. It’s gorier than some recent new releases, yes. But considering the nature of the demonic possession and rebirth at hand here (i.e. the ‘black angel’ literally having to eat the flesh of the dead and basically spit their spirit into the host body), I’d say that there’s a reason for the excessive gore. And it’s done well!

Speaking of the gore… uugghhh! Honestly, I’m pretty desensitized to gore generally, but there were definitely some parts that made me wrinkle by nose. Earlier in the movie, Piper and Laura go shopping, and Laura instructs Andy to keep Ollie in his room. When the two leave, Andy unlocks the door and tries to coax Ollie into conversation with melon (it would work for me, I fear). Andy turns his back to Ollie, leaving the knife on the counter. When he turns back around, Ollie is trying to deep throat the knife, and in trying to pull it out of his grasp, Andy slices Ollies top lip in half and cleaves his upper gums.

Another notable scene is when Laura leads Piper to the freezer where she’s storing the Cathy’s body, for her eventual possesion. She instructs Piper to feel around the freezer, and when Piper begins to panic upon touching something rough and unual, Laura notes that it’s “just meat” — that’s when the camera finally pans to a full-body shot of Laura guiding Piper’s hand along the leg of a freezer-burnt Cathy laying in the long freezer. No, I didn’t really get the significance of her feeling the need to do that but it definitely made me recoil!

Have you watched Bring Her Back yet? What did you think? What was your favorite part of the film? Let me know!