Bring Her Back Is a Haunting Leap Forward for the Philippou Brothers

Sally Hawkins delivers a career-best performance in Bring Her Back.

Danny and Michael Philippou brothers return with Bring Her Back, and it’s a damn leap forward from Talk to Me. Where their debut thrived on shock and youth-driven tension, Bring Her Back is quieter, thornier, and far more emotionally layered. This isn’t a party trick horror flick. This is pain, loss, and grief braided into myth—and the result is one of the most unsettling, mature horror films of the year.

Sally Hawkins destroys as Laura, a woman whose motivations feel just off enough to keep you squirming. Her performance alone cements Bring Her Back as a top-tier genre entry. But what lingers long after the credits is the film’s nuanced handling of abandonment, racial identity, and cultural dissonance—especially as filtered through the lens of foster care, sibling bonds, and adolescent grief.

It’s the kind of horror that seeps in sideways: slow-burn dread that examines what happens when we suppress instinct, ignore history, or try to build fantasy in the shadow of trauma. There are moments of intense supernatural terror, yes, but it’s the emotional rot underneath that sticks. The evil here—true evil—doesn’t need dialogue to disturb. It just exists. Watching it unfold, especially through the eyes of children who aren’t afforded the same cultural script for grief, is harrowing.

And shoutout to the brothers for casting an actual blind actress in a blind role. These details matter. The texture of Bring Her Back feels lived-in, considered, earned.

Yeah, there are some rushed moments in the lore explanation, and sure, there’s room to deepen the mythology if they revisit this world. But for now? The story they told hits hard.

If Talk to Me was for the TikTok generation, Bring Her Back is for the aging weirdos who grew up on gothic supernatural terror, slow exorcisms, and family secrets. It’s for those of us who’ve lost, who’ve grieved, and who know what it’s like to want to bring someone back—consequences be damned.

One of the year’s best. Period.

4/5 rating

A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.

STARRING

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

DIRECTED BY

Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou

WRITTEN BY

Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman

PRODUCED BY

Samantha Jennings and Kristina Ceyton