Former Youtubers-turned-horror auteur’s Danny & Michael Philipou have returned with Bring Her Back, a new film that both ups the ante and builds upon the style that they created in their debut, Talk to Me. Grounded by the perspective of Andy (Bill Barratt) the film takes the characters into the home of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a woman whose (at first) kind demeanour towards Andy and his legally blind sister, Piper (Sora Wong) begins to reveal something darker. However, Andy is the only one who starts to see the terror and disturbing nature of Laura’s home.

Bring Her Back is a very disturbing film that is mostly unafraid to show some really hard-to-watch imagery, while never being exploitative of the characters. The filmmaking is effective at communicating an uncomfortable and visceral sense of violence that will likely leave the audience uneasy and, at moments, shocked. Back accomplishes this with original horror images and does not rely on more artificial feeling ‘jump scares’ to be effective. It makes the audience frightened and anxious by giving us relatable characters who we hope for because of their past emotional experience but, at the same time, also pummels you with constant reminders that what happened to them in the past stays with them. This sort of connection to their trauma makes them really interesting characters that pull us right into the horror of their circumstances. 

Characters are well drawn out for this shorter feature film that relies on an audience understanding the supernatural concept. We understand the set up that ultimately gets the characters into trouble and, for the most part, logically keeps them there. There are some points where it feels like characters could have done more to expose the situation but, ultimately, the film does a good job logistically. It’s especially impressive how the film effectively pulls the audience into the classic horror trope of ‘people going to a new place where something disturbing is going down’ in the modern era. Many viewers will complain that they should ‘just phone someone’ or ‘film everything that’s going on’ but the Philippous use this often overused idea against the characters in an interesting way.

Bring Her Back boasts strong cinematography, though it could have leaned more into the girl’s perspective since hers is the most important throughout the film. The film still had strong visuals, while the colour palette or the shots didn’t always impress me, it has consistently effective framing that show us disturbing and weird images from different and unique angles. The sound design is well crafted to put us in the characters shoes and the mixing allows us t0 know where the characters are relative to the camera. It allows us to get to know, from a character’s perspective, what they are hearing and what they are thinking. 

What’s more, Sally Hawkins is used brilliantly by flipping her ‘typical mom-type’ role on its head, helping her to become the absolute opposite of her role in Paddington. She brings complexity to a mom character who is both empathetic at times and wholly terrifying in others. She is equal parts charming and creepy.  As a young actor, Billy Barratt does a really good job of holding down his role as the audience surrogate bringing us into this world, realistically trying to call out what is out of place while also being wholly dedicated to keeping his sister safe. Sora Wong puts in an admirable performance as well but I do wish we got more of her perspective. 

Admittedly, this film is pretty empty when it comes to hope. Bring Her Back‘s main focus is on the weight of grief and shows it as a complex emotion, especially when it came to people whom the characters loved but who also wronged them in the past. The film does a good job by making the characters’ grief being the main thing that drives their decision-making and it does an honest job showing that grief can have wholly negative consequences. But, as a motivation for complex characters, I think it makes a lot of sense. For a horror movie, Back is actually scary because bad things do happen to the characters. No one is unscathed by the pain of losing someone close to them and we can only hope that those who are can heal with time.

Even so, this film will not be showing that time.

After all, without giving any spoilers, there is a sense of doom by the film’s end that makes the moments of triumph feel unearned. Back doesn’t give the innocent interesting set ups, while the guilty constantly outplay the innocent. In doing so, the film makes those that triumph feel not as complete as the other characters.

Bring Her Back is available in theatres on Friday, May 30th, 2025.