Bring Her Back (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou

Starring:  Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Jonah-Wren Phillips, Mischa Heywood, Sora Wong

Bring Her Back is a creepy, effective thriller which manages to maintain interest and a keen sense of dread.  Its villain commits evil acts in the hopes of resurrecting her dead daughter.  She is insane, yes, but desperate enough to sacrifice another child so she can have her daughter back.  The other children involved are all cogs in her plot.  If Laura (Hawkins) weren't unreasonable and committed to a ritual in which one person is made to be a conduit suck up someone's soul and pass it along to the deceased, we could ask her if this entire scenario is worth it.  She would say yes. We all know better.

Such elements add an eerie dimension to Bring Her Back.  Everything Laura does is designed to bring her deceased daughter back from the dead.  To do this, she...well, I'll recap.  The movie begins with siblings Andy (Barratt) and blind Piper (Wong) coming home to discover their father dead on the shower floor.  With no other living relatives, the two are sent to Laura, who agrees to take them in as a foster parent.  Originally, Laura only wanted Piper, but Andy and Piper are a package deal, so Laura reluctantly accepts both.

Laura sets into a motion a plan to make Andy, who turns 18 soon and at that time wants to become Piper's legal guardian, look incompetent and possibly abusive.  She makes Andy believe he wets his bed at night and taps into his torment over his father's passing and past abuse.  Laura's other child is a mute named Oliver (Phillips), who is going through an even worse hell.  He decides to try and eat a sword in a brutal scene.  While Bring Her Back is bloody and gruesome, it also holds the viewer's curiosity.  What appears to be a snuff film plays a huge role in explaining what Laura is up to and why.  Does it actually work?  Bring Her Back suggests that it does.  The moral question is whether someone would want to find out and how badly they want to find out if it does.