Bring Her Back Review: A Haunting Follow-Up That Lingers, Even If It Doesn’t Cut as Deep

After their breakout success with Talk To Me, directors Danny and Michael Philippou return with Bring Her Back, another atmospheric and emotionally heavy entry into modern horror. While it doesn’t strike quite the same nerve-shredding intensity as their debut, this sophomore effort still casts a deeply unsettling spell. Centered around themes of grief, guilt, and maternal loss, the film is slower, more psychological, and more emotionally ambitious. It doesn’t always hit its mark, but it leaves an impression long after the credits roll.

The story follows orphaned siblings Andy and Piper, who are taken in by Laura, a recently bereaved foster mother played by Sally Hawkins. From the moment they arrive at Laura’s remote countryside home, something feels off. The silence is too still, the air too heavy. What unfolds is not a haunted house story in the traditional sense, but a spiritual unspooling of Laura’s unresolved trauma and the way it infects the lives around her.

Sally Hawkins is the film’s standout. Known for more tender, grounded roles, she taps into something raw and disturbed here. Her Laura is not your typical horror villain or misunderstood ghost surrogate. She’s fragile and grieving, but also unpredictable and suffocating. Hawkins delivers each scene with a quiet volatility, her eyes darting with emotion, her voice sometimes distant, sometimes too warm. It’s a fascinating, sad, and terrifying performance that anchors the entire film.

The two young leads, newcomer Elias Kaye as Andy and Isla Gessner as Piper, hold their own remarkably well. Their dynamic feels authentic, never cloying or forced. Kaye in particular brings a guarded, quietly defiant energy that gives the film its emotional core. The Philippou brothers know how to direct youth without talking down to them, and that continues here. These kids don’t feel like genre archetypes, they feel real, which makes the horror that surrounds them more impactful.

From a visual standpoint, Bring Her Back is gorgeous in a bleak way. The cinematography makes excellent use of shadow and space. Interiors feel suffocating, often closing in on the characters, while the outdoor landscapes offer no comfort—just fog and emptiness. It’s a film that knows how to generate mood, and it lingers there, sometimes to a fault. The atmosphere is thick, the pacing deliberate, and for some viewers that may prove too slow. But for those willing to lean in, it offers a creeping sense of dread that builds without relying on cheap scares.

Where Bring Her Back stumbles slightly is in its structure. The first act is a slow burn that sets things up beautifully. The final third becomes a bit muddled, layering supernatural and psychological elements without clearly committing to either. There are sequences that seem profound in the moment but feel underdeveloped in hindsight. Characters make decisions that are emotionally resonant but logically questionable. The result is a film that prioritizes tone over clarity, which works more often than not but still leaves a few threads hanging.

It’s also impossible not to compare it to Talk To Me, which was tighter, meaner, and more immediately effective. That film had a brutal clarity of vision. Bring Her Back, by contrast, is more ambitious in its emotional scope but lacks the same narrative sharpness. It feels like a film caught between genres—part ghost story, part character study, part psychodrama. And while that blend is intriguing, it does lead to some uneven pacing and thematic clutter.

Still, the Philippou brothers continue to prove they’re more than just flashy genre filmmakers. They’re interested in emotional damage, not just physical danger. Like their first film, Bring Her Back is about people trying to control pain and memory, and the horror that emerges when they fail. Their direction here is more restrained, more confident in letting silence speak. When the film works, it’s because they trust their performers and their images to do the heavy lifting.

Bring Her Back may not have the gut-punch immediacy of Talk To Me, but it stands on its own as a moody, emotional horror story with strong performances and real atmosphere. Sally Hawkins is a revelation in a role that could easily have veered into parody but instead feels heartbreakingly human. The Philippous swing for something deeper here, and while the results are imperfect, the film still lands with power. It’s a horror film that aches more than it screams, and sometimes that’s enough.

RATING: 4.0 out of 5.0

Bring Her Back is playing in theaters, May 30th 2025.