23 August,2025 08:09 PM IST | Mumbai | Johnson Thomas
Bring her back movie review
Australian Directors, brothers, Danny and Michael Philippou follow up their surprise hit Talk To Me with the blisteringly violent and chilling "Bring her Back." This film was highly anticipated and delivers spine-chilling thrills as expected but it is not as focused as their debut work. This film dwells on parental grief and the harrowing madness it unleashes as a consequence. The crazed lunacy of a single parent trying to resurrect her dead daughter by offering a foster child as a medium seems a bit over the top, though.
Andy (Billy Barratt), not yet 18, and a blind Piper (Sora Wong), a couple of years younger, are left orphaned when they find the body of their father, lifeless, on the floor of the shower. Andy wants to stay and take care of his younger sister until he can apply for custody, but the system does not allow him and sends them off into foster care. Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) places them in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former social worker herself who is supposedly recovering from her daughter's tragic death. When the two join Laura, they encounter a troubled child, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who is under Laura's care, who doesn't seem able to communicate and exhibits odd behaviour. Something seems off but Andy is not in a position to call it outâ¦before it gets too late. The death of loved ones derails normalcy, plunging the newly formed family into different variations of terror and despair.
Scriptwriters Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman make the strange behaviour patterns ensuing here impinge on psychological trauma. The gruesome events that follow the brother-sister duo's arrival at the foster home are quite unpredictable. A grainy video grab plays multiple times throughout the film, in an effort to connect what is transpiring to some strange cult ritual. There's plenty of gore and jump scares to sit through. The freakish storyline calls out for an overdose of bloody violence that will make you squirm in your seats. Horror tropes like demonic possession, grief-induced psychosis, and a surfeit of gut-wrenching gore abound.
The lack of cohesion in the narrative does put the brakes on believability but the narrative manages to stretch the suspense enough to be eventually rewarding. The narrative manages to stay gritty when focused on the siblings' dealings with their erratic foster mom, but once horrifying acts of self-violence start occurring it goes into a chaotic overdrive. There's so much happening that the audience gets no time to process it all.
The sound design and the score are chillingly effective. The make-up and special effects craft some horrific sequences of body horror that could give you nightmares for a long time. There are many moments in the film that will make you want to shut your eyes to the gruesomeness unfolding on screen but one particular moment involving Oliver biting into a knife, is particularly unforgettable. Cinematographer Aaron McLisky creates a daunting atmosphere with unusual camera angles and a visual style that makes the body torture look artistic.
Hawkins' as the crazed, increasingly distressed Mom, Wren Phillips' as Oliver, Barratt and Wong as the step siblings forced into foster care, make the characters they play believable and that's what makes this film worth watching. The string of shocking events strung together to showcase grief in a violent spiral wouldn't have been effective otherwise. The Philippous want to shock you and they achieve that objective with impressionistic zeal.
