Bring Her Back

• Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou
• May 29, 2025

Orphaned stepsiblings find themselves in the middle of an occult ritual when placed foster care.

I was hesitant to take in Bring Her Back after my disappointment over Talk to Me despite its hype. Much like how I feel over Jordan Peele and Quentin Totino (love his snacks), I am of the mind that Danny and Michael Philippou are more buzz than substance.

Weird music aside, this does more to set up the people’s personal problems in the beginning than it does it to set up any type of horror-dad’s death aside. Andy (Billy Barratt) is a young man with anger issues and a ton of guilt over so much because that is the pattern in movies today where the writers mistake dysfunction for dramatic potential. For reasons that confuse me he has a distinct loyalty to his stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) who is blind. His dad/her stepfather abused Andy but adored Piper which caused Andy to become protective of her? Not sure how that follows. Not to reveal too much about anybody I know but the opposite has been consistently the case.

After finding pops dead in the shower, the pair is sent to Laura (Sally Hawkins)-a former social worker whose daughter drowned. Laura comes off at first as kind and caring but that façade quickly fades. She is not functional enough to be a social worker but good enough to be a foster parent. What exactly are the rules in Australia?

Sally Hawkins is an excellent actress and brings a level of believability to all stages. What I find difficult to believe is how easily she is able to not only trick people around her but weaken this supposedly strong bond between stepbrother and stepsister. Were things far more fragile between the two than shown or stated? How did she convince Andy he wet the bed? Did he have a history of it? Was Sally aware of the one time Andy hit Piper when he was eight? His caseworker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) looked surprised by the revelation so I am guessing it was a closely held secret.

Laura’s daughter died from drowning. Using a VHS tape and some magic she plans on bringing her daughter back in the body of Piper using a demon she placed in a missing boy locked in her house who regularly tries to eat random objects.

It seems a little convenient that both children have no living relatives to be sent off to live with. I would buy it more if they were biologically related. At best you can assume that Piper was adopted by the abusive dad. That still doesn’t negate relatives. Was mom from another country? Was mom an only child with no family in Australia anywhere? These and other questions will never get answeredby Danny and Michael Philippou.

Andy’s efforts border on useless. In his dying breath he does clue his stepsister in on something happening but beyond that it’s some quick thinking on Piper’s part that saves her. And I’m not sure if the ritual didn’t go as planned in some way or events because of the chaos from the social worker messed things up somehow. I drifted off a little because there was so much personal problems but no scares. They upped the weird but failed to shock.

It’s more darkly supernatural than it is a horror movie. I need at least one moment where I should scream or be horrified. A few years ago there was a movie called Oculus. It was not necessarily scary but left you feeling emotionally crushed by the end yet had moments where I should have screamed or been horrified. Bring Her Back never even gets there perhaps because most of the characters wallow in their pain with Piper completely detached from things. Does she even mourn stepdad or have concern that her troubled stepbrother will not be able to get custody once he is of age? These and other questions will never get answered by Danny and Michael Philippou.

And I can’t quite figure out if the movie was trying to at the end rehab Laura who was trying to hijack the body of a little girl to bring her child back to life. It’s an almost tender shot of her cuddling the zombie corpse in the rain as the police close in while she sobs.

I eventually found myself bored silly with this movie. I was tempted to turn it off and move to anything else. It presents itself as a horror movie but it’s about personal emotional pain and nothing gets scary. It just gets weird. Like so much other horror, this is horror that puts message first. Story always needs to come first.

Bring Her Back is an interesting idea that fails to be interesting. It gets weird but doesn’t get frightening. I know these people have their fans but I’m not one of them.