‘Bring Her Back’ review: Into the pool of sadness

From the Talk to Me filmmakers comes Bring Her Back, a chilling horror tale starring Sally Hawkins as the worst mom since Mrs. Doubtfire.

Let’s say you’ve got an empty swimming pool, a blind girl, a mute demon child with the appetite of a cursed hippo, and Sally Hawkins whispering like she got possessed by a spirit at a vegan grief retreat in the woods. What do you even do with that? If you’re the Philippou brothers—the mad lads behind Talk to Me—you shoot it on film, slather on the dread, and duct-tape the emotional fallout of a truly broken family to the inside of your horror movie like a stick of dynamite.

To that end, Bring Her Back isn’t really a jumpscare circus or monster-of-the-week bloodbath, at least in totality. It’s actually a whole lot quieter, slimier, and downright sadder. Like Hereditary’s weirder Australian cousin who lives off-grid and owns too many VHS tapes. And I really, really dug it.

Oliver lost his family…just like you guys.

This is the sophomore feature from Danny and Michael Philippou, the Aussie twin auteurs who went viral with their YouTube channel RackaRacka before drop-kicking us emotionally with Talk to Me in 2023. This time they trade suburban séance parties for rural rot and trauma-thick air. Our leads include Piper (played by real-life vision-impaired newcomer Sora Wong), a blind teen trying to grow up without getting devoured by the world. Also Andy (Billy Barratt from the TV movie Responsible Child), her overprotective brother with the emotional range of a shook soda can.

After a family tragedy, the siblings enter the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins, in full “grief villain” mode), who lives in a secluded house with Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a kid so creepy he makes The Omen look like a PBS pledge drive. And I haven’t even mentioned the moldy home videos or weird cult vibes, but at least I invoked Hereditary already.

He needs someone that could give him special care.

At its core, Bring Her Back is a tragedy in horror cosplay. The Philippous aren’t really playing around with cool kills or ironic detachment as some might expect. They’re digging into the black hole of unresolved grief, particularly how it twists people, deforms love, turns guardians into jailers, and children into monsters.

Cinematographer Aaron McLisky (returning from Talk to Me) shoots it like an emotional prison: muted lighting, tight interiors, every shadow thick with despicable menace. The sound design by Emma Bortignon induces shivers-on-your-shins-level eerie. Composer Cornel Wilczek drops a score that’s essentially a haunted house mixtape for crying your eyes out. There’s a VHS ritual running through the film and it’s pure analog nightmare fuel. It teases a larger mythology without spoon-feeding you lore like some Netflix-algorithm-horror bag of chips.

I gotta tell you a secret.

Look, Bring Her Back doesn’t snap necks like Talk to Me did. It broods well enough, simmers nicely, and depending on your patience level, it all might either feel like a masterclass in therapeutic chills or like you’re waiting too long for the pool to fill up. The third act veers a little too into “horror fable” territory without fully nailing the emotional crescendo it’s clearly chasing.

But what it does stick is its character work. Piper and Andy exude real, raw, and heartbreaking pathos. Laura, especially as played by Hawkins, is the film’s slow-motion implosion. Someone who thinks she’s helping while quietly cracking under a grief so immense it starts demanding blood. Even the monster, if you can call him that, lands like a low-fi metaphor out of Pet Sematary. A little boy consumed by what someone else couldn’t let go.

I’ve spoken with an angel.

As for the film’s centerpiece…scenes…you might call them shock horror. But I dub it sympathy horror. My scream was mournful, really. There’s one particularly brutal line (no spoilers) that lands not like a twist but a truth you knew was coming since the first scene.

And then there’s the pool, good lord, that empty basin of nostalgic rot. But really it’s not the monster in the shed that haunts me hours after my viewing experience. It’s the sound of old tape whirring, a memory playing back wrong, someone trying to rewind a person who’s gone. That’s deep-feeling horror heartbreak and then some.

The bottom line.

Bring Her Back may not reinvent the A24 horror wheel, but it sure as hell coats it in blood, sadness, and a gorgeous layer of latex-veined prosthetics. It’s creepy, tender, and ultimately about how we destroy the people we love when we’re too afraid to lose them.

I admired the hell out of it, even when it stumbled in its own darkness. And I’d rather a horror film aim too high than play it too safe. It’s a biting, bleeding, weeping follow-up to Talk to Me that will stare you down with blind eyes and ask you to lose yourself in a cannonball, plunging deep into a pool overflowing with trauma and sad-boy-horror in its final form.

Bring Her Back opens in theaters on May 30. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of A24. Read more articles by Jon Negroni here.