Bring Her Back (2025) Review

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

While death is the worst part of life due to how unavoidable it is, the last thing we need is to try delaying or undoing that chapter.


PLOT


Bring Her Back follows 17 year old Andy and his younger, visually impaired step sister Piper who go through a terrible batch of trauma when their father Phil (Steven Phillips) is found dead in the shower, leaving them surprised as he apparently just beat cancer. Their social worker Wendy arranges them to live with Laura who is fostering another boy named Oliver. Within a day, Andy quickly becomes unsettled to the boy's muteness and noticing Laura instantly favoring over Piper, much like how his dad was when alive. At his funeral, Laura takes a lock of hair from his corpse before convincing his son to kiss him goodbye. They later seem to get on the same page by spending the night drinking, which gives Andy the time to confess how bothered he was of the fact Phil was abusive towards him and resented that he remained affectionate towards his sister. In the same conversation, Laura admits she had a blind daughter named Cathy who died of accidental drowning, and she prays to hear her call her Mum one more time. The day after, Andy tries spending time with Ollie while Laura goes running errands with Piper. It backfires quickly because when feeding him a slice of a rockmelon, he starts knawing onto a knife. Wanting to save him, he tries taking him to the hospital but he starts convulsing after going past the encircled property line, screaming for help. When Laura returns with Piper, she takes him to her room and plays a VHS tape containing a ritual that returns him to his mute state, feeding him Phil's hair in the process. When Andy later showers, he faints upon seeing a hallucination of Phil warning him Piper will die in the rain. After Laura takes him to the hospital for recovery's sake, she takes Piper to her shed to give her Cathy's clothes, but her blindness makes her unaware that her daughter's corpse is stored in a meat fridge that Ollie feasts on. When she later re-watches the tape, it's revealed that Ollie is possessed by a demon named Tari; The ritual is resurrection based where the corpse of the deceased will be fed to the host, regurgitate the soul into the body of one who recently died in the same manner in order for it to all work. This means Laura will intend to drown Piper on a rainy day to replicate Cathy's death and Ollie will be the vessel. She gets Andy out of the way by punching Piper while sleeping and framing him for it. When he leaves, he tells Wendy how unusual she's been and she denies it because she was a social worker as well, making it impossible for her to imagine she'd be accused of being dangerous. Andy backs his claim by spotting a missing persons poster and recognizes Ollie as 'Connor Bird', officially convincing her to check it out. As Laura takes Piper to goal-ball practice, Tari grows tired and restless to the point that it uses Connor's body to trash the house and devour inanimate objects before eating his arm; He even bites Laura before she leaves. By the time she returns, she cleans the house in time to convince Wendy nothing is wrong. As Wendy drives to the house, Andy leaves a voicemail to Piper admitting that Phil's abuse troubled him so much that he did strike her when she was younger, vowing to never hurt her again ever since. At the house, Wendy almost believes Laura's ruse until she sees her injured arm and Andy finds Connor eating Cathy's body in the shed. Andy & Wendy almost retreat to pick up Piper, but Laura runs them over to prevent it. With Wendy instantly killed, Laura then drowns Andy as he was clinging on to his last breath. She then picks up Piper as planned, but the child soon realizes something is wrong when finding her brother's body in the bathroom and she tries running away Laura drags her to the pool to drown her. She only lets go when the girl calls her Mum for the first time. Realizing she went too far to cling onto the past, she lets her go and doesn't stop Connor from going past the circle. As Piper gets rescued by a passing car, a now possessed-free Connor is found by the authorities and the film ends with them surrounding Laura in the pool with her daughter's body.


THOUGHTS


I always knew the Philippous would be game changers after Talk to Me and while we wait for that franchise to continue, they make the time to make something all the more scarier. This one caught me off guard so much that I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. This was a different kind of possession from what we’ve seen before because I never thought there had to be a soul swap between three different bodies and history has to repeat itself in order for it to work. That is an over the top process, yet effective because you can’t believe anyone would go that far to undo the feeling of grief. With every second that passes, Aaron McLisky’s cinematography is so unsettling because it lets you know from the start there’s no moment of relief even when the tension stops. Never again do I want to see a possessed child mutilate himself the way here. Every-time I saw young Jonah Wren Phillips, he was harming my soul for being this twisted demon of Tari. Every chance we got to see a glimpse of the vulnerable Connor, I just kept frowning because I couldn’t believe one’s body went through all of that unwillingly. While I was in relief he’d be saved, it doesn’t change all the shock that led up to it. What this movie does different from Talk to Me was show exactly how monstrous grief really is the longer we allow it to consume us rather than figure out a better way to heal. This was the exact case when seeing Sally Hawkins be so horribly great as Laura. At first you fall into believing her maternal care to be genuine, only to slowly see her show true colors as psychotically desperate to regain what she’s lost. The way she manipulates the kids to turn on each other before it all falls apart again for her is heartbreaking because it’s so clear she doesn’t want to go this far and only feels like she needs to until realizing she never had to be. Because of how deranged she became to tear a family apart, it was so illogical to root for a out of siblings that were flawed and did their best not letting it define either of them. Billy Barrratt was indeed excellent as Andy because this was a boy who had his own guilt and all he wanted to do was redeem himself as being a protective brother. As much as one would say you can’t blame the feeling of being bothered of being treated different from siblings, it didn’t condone his original response he made at the time. And as much as you can hate him for it, you respect him for stepping up no matter how bad the odds were against him. Sora Wang was incredible as Piper because due to actually being visually impaired, there was authenticity to the performance. Apart from that fact, it was easy to attach to her as she was intuitive enough to save herself when it mattered and you can relate to her wanting to maintain whatever peace is left inside and out between her and her brother. She may not ever know what Andy did to her but even if she were, she would choose to forgive him by seeing his point of view, whether or not that’s a good idea. And even though her condition made her most vulnerable, she’s able to be resilient enough to survive. She didn’t just call Laura her mom because she knew that was what she wanted, but mainly that she truly believed she stepped in as one up until that point. For her, it hurts more to lose her brother before being betrayed by one that was supposed to protect her because he was all she had left once their dad died and wasn’t ready to imagine life without him either. Whatever family takes her in now, you can only hope their loving nature is not in a deranged state. Last but not least, I want to give a shoutout to Sally-Anne Upton as Wendy because she felt realistic of a social worker who believed everything based on facts & evidence. Seeing was believing for her and while she did see the dark truth of her friend, it sadly didn’t save her life. While so much of this movie works, there were still some things I scratched my head about as I watched along. For starters, I do respect Piper not using a cane since she trusts her surroundings, but she should still have it on her to better them. I also think it’s stupid for siblings to be separated from each other when child services step in because it only makes the matter worse, movie or not. And while I can flip out over how no one at the funeral noticed Laura take some of Phil’s hair, it’s another that she didn’t bother explaining to Andy of the rules of the circle to prevent Ollie/Connor/Tari to convulse. And since Andy knew the boy was odd, it was totally on him letting him have the knife to eat the melon off of. Hell, it’s also on Wendy to not know of Ollie as in not checking on Laura after losing Cathy. Other than that, you will be hooked with an insane psychological experience that is Bring Her Back. And if that’s what you’re into, see this now.