Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou burst onto the horror scene back in 2022 with their excessively hyped (and admittedly pretty excellent) supernatural horror film Talk To Me, which had the community abuzz and seemingly heralded the arrival of some notable new talent in the horror genre. I actually really liked Talk To Me, though I don’t think it quite lived up to my expectations; however, when I saw the trailer for their sophomore film, 2025’s Bring Her Back, I was completely on board, because it looked fucking great.
I had wanted to see it in the theater, but just didn’t get around to it (cut me some slack, going to the movies is expensive and the closest movie theater to me is almost twenty miles away), but thankfully the film recently dropped on HBO Max, so I settled in one rainy Saturday afternoon to give it a watch.
And hot DAMN, this was FANTASTIC; grim and fucked up in the best possible way, with an intense emotional core and some squirm-inducing violence. I would actually be shocked if this didn’t end up in my top five (or maybe even top three) horror movies of the year; I loved it that much.
At the beginning of the story, there’s some grainy VHS footage that looks sort of like a black magic ritual (or something) involving possible torture. Someone speaks in Russian, though it’s not entirely clear what’s going on. This is just a foretaste of the bizarre mystery we’re about to be thrust into.
We’re then introduced to our protagonists, seventeen-year-old Andy (Billy Barratt) and his younger, partially blind stepsister Piper (Sora Wong, in her film debut). The pair are obviously very close, with Andy feeling fiercely protective of his sibling, even to the point of keeping certain unpleasant things from her so she won’t realize how shitty the world can be. Piper, for her part, is grateful for her big brother doting on her, but is also an independent person in her own right, even refusing to use her cane so that people won’t baby her for her disability.
Unfortunately for the two of them, terrible reality soon intervenes: their single father, who has been undergoing chemo and is in remission from cancer, suddenly dies in the shower, and Andy finds him dead on the bathroom floor. Andy is understandably traumatized, and simply stands there frozen as Piper desperately tries to revive their father, to no avail.
Because Andy and Piper are still minors, they are placed in the foster care system, though Andy is only three months shy of his eighteenth birthday. Their case worker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) is going to place Piper in a foster home and keep Andy in a facility until he gets to the age of majority and can legally apply for guardianship of his sister. But Andy insists he has to accompany Piper to the foster home; the siblings don’t want to be separated, and he wants to be able to look after her. This plan is agreed to; after all, they’ll only be living at the foster home for three months, then they’ll hopefully be able to have a home of their own.
Andy and Piper are sent to live with a somewhat dotty foster mom and former counselor named Laura, played by the outstanding Sally Hawkins, cast somewhat against type here; she’s been in loads of things, though I mostly knew her from Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and several of Mike Leigh’s films, including All or Nothing, Vera Drake, and Happy-Go-Lucky.
Nothing seems that strange initially, though Laura is…eccentric, for sure, introducing Piper to her dog and making her pet him without telling her that he’s actually taxidermied, and very obviously showering Piper with attention and kindness while sort of blowing Andy off, calling him by the wrong name, stuffing him in an old storage room while giving Piper a nicely furnished little girl’s room, and blocking him out of a “family selfie” by standing in front of him.
Well, it’s only for three months, right? And there’s bound to be an adjustment period. But things start getting a bit more ominous not long after; turns out that Laura had a blind daughter named Cathy who drowned in the pool at some point in the past, and more unsettling still, she also has another foster child named Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips) who is mute, has a shaved head, and is locked in his room most of the time. There are also more subtle but equally creepy things, like Laura’s property being ringed with a massive white-painted circle.
As time goes on, it starts to become clear that Laura has some kind of agenda, though for a while we’re not entirely sure what that is. It’s obvious, though, that she’s gunning to keep Piper as her own while doing various things to undermine and gaslight Andy so that he will not be deemed fit to take custody of his sister when he turns eighteen.
We the audience are also privy to some of Laura’s behavior that the kids don’t see, such as her cutting a lock of hair from their dead father’s head at his funeral and kissing the corpse on the lips, even though she never met the guy (and making Andy kiss his dead dad on the mouth too, claiming “it’s custom,” which…no).
After said funeral, though, Laura seems to bond with both kids while letting them get drunk in celebration of their dad, and afterwards seems to open up to Andy about her grief over losing her daughter. Andy also confesses to his own troubled relationship with his father, and how he had some behavioral problems when he was younger because of it. Although on the surface this seems a nice moment, as Laura appears to be trying to relate to Andy on his level, we already know because of her previous weird-ass behavior that this is just more fodder she’ll use in service of her nefarious plans.
I won’t spoil what those plans are, since this is still such a new film, but suffice it to say that it involves Piper and Ollie, and ties back in with the eerie videotape we saw at the beginning of the movie.
Bring Her Back was everything a horror movie should be: it was riveting, it was disturbing, it wasn’t afraid to go to some very dark places, and it had some scenes of violence that would make even most seasoned horror fans wince a bit (especially if you’re squeamish about mouth and tooth trauma, because boy howdy, there’s a lot of that, and there’s one scene involving a kitchen knife that legit made me go AAAGGGHHHHHHH). The mystery of what Laura is up to is doled out at a perfect pace, and you become so invested in Andy and Piper’s sweet sibling relationship that you can’t help but feel terrified on their behalf as events begin to get more and more messed up.
The acting is also impeccable across the board, with Sally Hawkins and Billy Barratt in particular crushing their roles (although everyone is amazing, as I mentioned). And finally, there’s an adorable kitty cat named Junkman in the movie who doesn’t get killed (well, that we know of; he just runs away), which is always a plus in my book.
If you liked Talk To Me, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like Bring Her Back as well; it’s definitely its own animal, though it does have some thematic similarities. For my money, Bring Her Back was loads better than Talk To Me, and like I said, has easily earned a spot on my “favorite horror films of 2025” list.
Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.
The Scare Salon 