Bring Her Back (2025) – Full Horror Movie Review

One of my favorite horror movies of the year, Bring Her Back, cements the Philippou brothers as two of the most exciting voices in modern horror. This is a film that doesn’t just scare you, it unsettles you, crawls under your skin, and refuses to leave.

It’s grim, emotionally raw, and often brutal, but it’s also deeply considered. This is my full review of Bring Her Back, one of the most disturbing and memorable horror films of 2025.

A Grief-Soaked Descent Into the Uncanny

The story opens with teenage half-siblings Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), whose lives are thrown into chaos following the sudden death of their father. Grieving, vulnerable, and facing separation, the two are placed into foster care under Laura (Sally Hawkins), an outwardly warm and softly spoken woman whose smiles conceal something deeply wrong.

Laura’s home quickly becomes a place of creeping dread. Another foster child, the unsettling Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips), moves through the house like a ghost feral, unpredictable, and deeply disturbing. As fragments of ritualistic behavior, emotional manipulation, and possession-like imagery emerge, the film tightens its grip, turning the domestic into something nightmarish.

The Philippous revisit themes they’ve explored before, missing children, grief, possession, and ritual, but Bring Her Back sharpens those ideas into something far more controlled and vicious. The setting is intimate and familiar, which only makes the horror more effective. This is a film that understands that the safest spaces are often the most terrifying when trust is betrayed.

Sally Hawkins: A Career Best Performance

One of the film’s greatest strengths is Sally Hawkins, who is utterly unrecognizable from her past roles as gentle protagonists or nurturing maternal figures. Laura delivers what I genuinely believe is her best performance to date.

Her transformation is subtle and chilling, moving from cooing caregiver to quiet orchestrator of horror with bone-dry precision. There’s no scenery-chewing villainy here. Instead, Hawkins plays Laura as someone who believes she is right and that grief justifies everything. That conviction is far scarier than any monster.

Craft, Atmosphere, and Sensory Horror

Visually and sonically, Bring Her Back is exceptional. One of the film’s most intelligent choices is using Piper’s partial vision as a storytelling tool. Because she can’t see clearly, the audience is often denied clarity as well. Shapes blur, shadows linger too long, and darkness conceals what we should be afraid of.

The cinematography creates a world that feels unstable and claustrophobic, like the walls are closing in. Combined with an oppressive sound design, the film keeps you constantly on edge, never allowing you to feel grounded or safe.

And yes, the horror is brutal.

The Philippou brothers do not hold back. This is practical-effects-driven horror, filled with deeply uncomfortable sequences and moments you will physically want to look away from. The table-biting scene involving Ollie is genuinely seared into my brain, and somehow bizarrely the taxidermy dog wearing two party hats is both horrifying and weirdly adorable at the same time. That tonal dissonance sticks with you.

Flaws Beneath the Blood

The film isn’t flawless. While its emotional core, grief, trauma, and sibling loyalty are strong, the narrative occasionally feels loose. Some of the logic becomes murky, and the resolution doesn’t fully match the build-up's power. That said, the build-up is so good that it’s hard to be too harsh.

Additionally, if you’re hoping for subtlety, this may not be your film. Bring Her Back leans heavily into bleakness and gore, sometimes overwhelming its emotional payoff. The Philippous push hard into horror tropes, and while that mostly works, it occasionally overshadows the quieter emotional beats.

Why It Works

What truly elevates Bring Her Back is its thematic ambition. This isn’t just a movie about possession or evil rituals; it’s about loss. About the dangerous human desire to undo grief. About what happens when love turns obsessive and when rewriting the past invites something far darker into the present.

The film argues that the real monster isn’t supernatural; it’s the will to bring someone back, no matter the cost. Trust becomes vulnerability. Care becomes control. Safety becomes betrayal. All of it unfolds within the nightmare of the domestic space.

Final Thoughts

If you’re ready for horror that lingers long after the lights come up, Bring Her Back is essential viewing. It’s confident, disturbing, beautifully made, and emotionally charged. Just know what you’re walking into: this film is deeper, darker, and absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Brace yourself. Step into Laura’s house of horrors. Let the Philippou brothers show you how grief can become a monster and experience one of the best horror films of the year.