Bring Her Back (2025)

Rated R.  This is an intense R.  Honestly, this might be one of the cruelest movies that I've watched in a while.  It is visually brutal, capitalizing on having some of the most graphically violent images.  In fact, most of the scares are exclusively from seeing things that you thought would be too far by any extent of the imagination.  Couple that with nudity, language, underage drinking, and a whole mess of horrible things happening to a child, this is one of the most well-deserved R-Ratings that I've seen in a while.

DIRECTORS:  Daniel and Michael Philippou

This movie is so brutal that I had blurred images galore on Google image search.  I know that this might actually be subtly seducing some of my readership into wanting to see what all the hubbub is about.  But I have to be honest:  I don't like visceral imagery.  It's not for me.  I think one of my most detested horror movies was Cabin Fever because it was just that upsetting to watch.  This movie...honestly, it ranks up there.  There's a scene midway through the movie that still makes me pause.  I know that I'm not putting any kind of format or style into this writing, but I also am still immediately reeling from what I saw.

Okay.  Take a breath.  Here's the deal.  My buddy at work really likes horror movies.  I'm going to be slightly critical and imply that he likes them too much.  There's a mild chance that he might be reading this.  I've given him guff for this before, so this isn't exactly talking out of school.  And I'll be forthright.  A lot of the time, our horror tastes tend to align.  But this was too much.  Maybe that's why I have been so burned out by the Ari Aster stuff and the stuff that A24 has been putting out.  I realized that I'm a far bigger fan of the jump scare than I am anything that has a brutal tone to it.

It just feels like a mean movie.  The funny thing is that I also heard that everyone involved in this movie had a fun time making it, especially the kid who was brutalized for most of the film.  So I should be all "Rah! Rah!  It's just special effects." But it isn't, is it?  See, I'm watching the Final Destination movies right now.  Trust me, these aren't great films.  But do you know what they are?  They are fun.  These movies have that level of shock value.  We're going to see some special effects that are going to make me make some gag faces.  But I don't consider those movies very mean.  Ultimately, what I'm dancing around here is tone.  

The crazy part is that I really had a good time with these guys' other movie, Talk to Me.  It's not like Talk to Me felt like it was made by other directors.  These guys are shaping up to be auteurs.  They have a certain style and they seem to be embracing dark genre storytelling.  But what the difference between Talk to Me and Bring Her Back (even though they kind of seem to share similar title styles) is the fact that Talk to Me didn't forget to have fun.  I'm not saying that Bring Her Back is a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination.  Despite the fact that I had to power through some stuff, ultimately the movie is incredibly effective and does the job it sets out to do.  But I will tell you what.  I bought Talk to Me because it was affordable and I hadn't seen the movie.  I'm really stoked that Bring Her Back was on HBO Max because I can tell you that I never want to see this movie again.

I'm about to parade my complaints down this blog in the more forthright way imaginable.  I can already see myself getting petty while writing this, so be aware that I'm on your team when I state some incredibly whiny things.  I, too, wish that I had a better critique of this movie than what I'm offering you.  But again, I don't hate it.  It's just that there's a couple things that really bother me about the movie.  

Part of what bugs me is Laura, the central antagonist of the film.  I really like Sally Hawkins in this role.  My goodness, Sally Hawkins knows what to do with parts.  She's in a bunch of stuff that I'm not the biggest fan of, but I can always attest that Hawkins is the most interesting part of the film.  (Honestly, the acting all around is top notch.  There isn't one complaint there.  I just really like Sally Hawkins and I feel the need to secure this plot of digital real estate to put that down.)  But Laura's character doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  A lot of it is hinged on the fact that Laura has had a mental break following the death of her daughter Cathy.  She used to be this great social worker and the best that Australia has ever seen.  She still talks like she's this wholesome loving person, but from moment one, she's enacted a plan to make Andy seem like he's lost his faculties.  It makes sense.  After all, if Andy turns 18 with no red flags, he gets to take custody of Piper.  That clearly wasn't in Laura's plan, so everything she does is to make sure that Andy is out of the picture so she can put Cathy's soul in Laura through Ollie.  It's all very confusing.

But it also feels like Laura knows that she's the villain of a horror movie at times.  From her perspective, she has to be unimpeachable so that Andy can look bad and Laura can take custody of Piper.  Now, from meeting Andy, she seems to be torturing him.  She intentionally calls him by the wrong name. She steals his phone to see what he is thinking about her.  She makes him kiss his father, despite the fact that she shouldn't know that Andy's father was secretly abusive.  Now, we can all squint and pretend that these moments somehow align with her master plan to make Andy do something harsh. But the thing that I don't really understand is the concussion scene.

Andy is visited by the ghost / hallucination of his dead father.  I read this more as a hallucination sequence because Andy is so afraid of taking a shower ever since discovering his father's body splayed outside of a shower.  But his father tells him that Piper is going to die in the rain and warns Andy not to let Piper go out in the rain.  Okay, Andy retains the message and wakes up in the hospital, desperately trying to save Piper because it is raining out.  Little did we know that a sizable portion of the movie is going to have rain, so Andy could have taken a breather.  But he was in the dark as much as we were.  But this is where I'm frustrated.

Andy gets a visit from Laura.  That's fine.  She's messing with his head, which is her modus operandum.  But he begs her not to let Piper play out in the rain.  He, in a state of desperation, tells her that he got this secret message from his dad and begs her not to go out.  Laura agrees to keep Piper out of the rain.  Smash cut to Laura saying it would be whimsical to play out in a downpour. Now, Andy's not there.  He's still in hospital (I say "in hospital" because we're in Australia and maybe commonwealth rules still apply?).  Laura needs Piper healthy to bring back Cathy.  Why would she be tempting fate to mess with Andy in a way that he would never find out about?  She needs Piper in good shape.  If there was even a risk that the rain could hurt her, Laura would be keeping her safe inside.  The central conflict are these two parental figures duking it out for Piper's love and safety.  The idea that Laura would be risking Piper in any way doesn't make sense to me.

Can I be honest about something?  Intellectually, I understand the whole Ollie bit.  Horror nerds, by the way, aren't tuning in for the Laura / Piper / Andy hour.  Nope.  They want to see this demonic kid self-harm himself for the length of a film.  Anyway.  Ollie.  I understand that Ollie is a vessel for Cathy's spirit.  Laura watches these homemade Russian black market demon videos explaining what it takes to transfer the soul out of a person into another person by turning people into Golems / vessels for souls.  It's all very graphic, which I've already stressed at length.  And I get that Ollie is not Ollie.  He's a missing child named Connor.  If Ollie leaves the circle surrounding the home, Connor starts taking control and killing Ollie.  Fine.  It's just...I'm not sure what the rules of Ollie are.  I get the circle bit.  I also know that Connor is desperate to get out from the control of Ollie based on what he wrote on the notepad.  But that end?  Ollie hangs out in the swimming pool because that's where Cathy drowned?  The end has Piper being held underwater and she shouts "Mum", which Laura asked Piper to do earlier.  The thing that was frustrated was that the subtitles said, "[in Cathy's voice] Mum!"  Um...Ollie hadn't done anything yet.  Also, he's eating bodies.  Does Ollie need people to survive?  Also, what is the timeline it takes to transfer a soul from one body to another?  That entire thread, if you were trying to follow the rules, is confusing as heck.

But can I tell you one shot I liked that makes me feel like a sadist?  Wendy getting hit by a car was the most effective someone-dying-by-vehicular-homicide I've ever seen.  I've seen that bit a few times, but this one genuinely impressed me.

I really do want to stress that I didn't hate it. But gross out movies like this one are not for me.  If anything, the movie bummed me out more than scared me.  I don't like a world where everyone is just cruel to one another.