Bring Her Back (2025)
letterboxd.com
Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are introduced to their new sibling by their foster mother, only to learn that she has a terrifying secret.

I sometimes get the urge to do horror marathons alone, so I decided to catch up with recent horror movies which flew under my radar. I started with The Gorge, which is a pretty cool romance/action-adventure flick with a horror theme (rather than straight-out horror) but it most definitely didn’t prepare me for the psychological assault which is Bring Her Back. I had to stop after watching it. I struggled to sleep, and, I don’t know why, but I just had to rewatch it immediately after waking up.

Gonna go into spoilers from here on in, so all I can say is, if you do decide to watch it, try to steel yourself as much as you can. I’d essentially call it a cautionary tale taken to gruesome extremes, with visceral abuse either stapled onto every scene, or looming in the background when it isn’t. It’s only 104 minutes long, but it sure feels a helluva lot longer while watching it. It never drags on without meaning it, and it’s only when it wants to twist the knife. Very well paced, and very well acted to boot, in my opinion. Brilliant performances on all sides.

Ruin The Magic

So, I watched Talk To Me a while back and fell in love with the Philippou brothers’ style and depth. It demonstrated an uncomfortably personal understanding of grief generating profoundly unhealthy coping mechanisms out of loneliness, denial and alienation (please, PLEASE reach out and talk to someone, anyone, if you’re experiencing unbearable grief - dumping it all online is still better than trying to swallow it down by yourself!).

Bring Her Back is all of that, but on creatine. The effects are brilliant, the body horror may be the best I’ve seen so far, on par with or even better than Talk To Me - the way they portray swollen/bruised/wounded flesh simply overloads my nervous system, it’s hyperrealistic. I genuinely had to cover my eyes through parts of it, and that hasn’t happened in a long, very long time. But all of that body horror is just a sprinkling of salt on top of a grievous psychological wound.

It’s not so much a slow burn, as the assault starts early on, but the escalation’s steadily paced. I got angry, downright furious watching Laura do everything she did to Piper and Andy, it’s such a visceral portrayal of an authority figure using their status and expertise to manipulate the vulnerable and deepen pre-existing instabilities and traumas. I wanted to hurt her, badly, from the first attempt at manipulation. I wanted to make her stop at any cost. Granted, these were my own childhood traumas resonating almost completely with what I was seeing, because, yet again, everything was so… there, so immediately accurate.

Then it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. It’s non-stop, there is no time to catch one’s breath, not even in the quieter parts, because the situation itself looms over every second of this film. It is inescapable, and it made me feel just as powerless as Andy. And I still have trouble digesting what she did to Connor… I mean… Jesus Christ, I don’t even know what I mean, I have no words to describe the dozens of knots which now fester in my guts.

But the thing which pissed me off the most was the ending. It’s hardly a happy one. Laura does not get what she deserves, not even close. Sure, Piper and Connor manage to… I wanted to say “they manage to get away,” but I doubt anyone could ever actually escape what she did to them. At best, they would be cursed to live a life of endless trauma, both psychological and physical. Andy was the lucky one, as horrible as that is. It wasn’t a bad ending, even though I somehow doubt Laura would have had such a massive change of heart after everything she did leading up to it. Just like Talk To Me before it, it leaves one emotionally destitute. And it’s accurate, I’d say. There could be no happy ending to such levels of abuse and mindfuckery. The fact that Piper couldn’t see what was happening was a minor blessing.

I will now forever be afraid of people who stuff their dead pets…