Bring Her Back

The wildly ambitious sophomore effort Bring Her Back gradually reveals itself to be a direct statement on the cheap exploitation of grief, channeling the existential nihilism of French New Extremity works like Martyrs to explore just how unhealthy it is to process death at such a surface level. That it’s also one of the most distressing, anxiety-inducing horror films of recent memory when taken at face value is just a bonus.

All horror film is metaphorical. But to qualify for the genre itself—and satisfy the base demands of the base—a movie is required to both accelerate toward lunacy and entertain a certain amount of mayhem. “Bring Her Back” contains enough gore to swamp a blood bank. But it also features a performance by Sally Hawkins that may be the best of the year, or even her career.

Bring Her Back is a more emotionally ambitious movie than Talk to Me, though it’s also messier. Hawkins’s performance as a woman who was destroyed by the death of her daughter, more so than anyone around her seems to realize, both powers and unbalances the film.

The film further establishes the Philippous as some of the best directors of young actors working today.

Like a punk band turning four chords into pure angst, Bring Her Back turns familiar trauma-based horror into a traumatic experience. To sit through Bring Her Back is to endure it.

There’s too much focus on disturbing the viewer rather than illuminating anything for them. Bring Her Back is a film that knows how to provoke, but not how to provide much insight.

When they can translate something into a tangible sensation, like the camera effects of focus that take viewers into Piper’s distorted field of vision, the film operates within a comfortable range for the directors. Where they struggle to locate resonance is in the emotional realm.

Excellent movie. The character development, building up to a climax where one even has to sympathise with the deeds of the villain, the way the ending ties everything together... Fantastic movie. But it really hurts

6.5/10 I think what made Talk to Me work so well was the pacing and the balance between the characters and the sheer craziness unfolding around them, that blend made it fun and genuinely engaging, in my opinion. This time, though, the Philippous seem to tone things down, the pacing is more restrained, and the focus shifts heavily toward character development, personally, that didn't quite work for me, they spend a bit too much time building the three main characters, and in doing so, they seem to forget to deliver the wild, chaotic moments i was really looking forward to. Because when those intense scenes do happen, wow, they're great, brutal, disturbing, and exactly the kind of energy i wanted more of, if they had sprinkled some of that chaos earlier or midway through the film, i think it would've been much more effective. Story-wise, if you really think about it, a lot of what happens could've been easily avoided, even feels a bit unnecessary at times, but despite that, the performances are strong, Sally Hawkins performance is genuinely terrifying, and the rest of the cast also does a great job, especially Sora Wong as Piper, good for her for landing this role. And to be fair, even though the film spent maybe too much time on character development, it wasn't wasted, i actually did care about these characters, i felt empathy, anger, frustration, pretty much the whole emotional spectrum, that's not something every horror film can pull off, so props for that. I wish i could be more positive about Bring Her Back, a 7/10 would've been fair if i left the theater feeling pretty happy once the credits rolled, but overall, it's still not a bad film by any means, it's a decent horror movie, definitely watchable if you're okay with the slower, more character-driven approach, if that's not your thing, though, one watch is probably enough, but even then, there's still something to appreciate here.

Boring, slow, disappointing ending. Watching this after seeing obsession and the mummy made it feel very weak. Obsession and the mummy might have set the standard too high.

Another movie that makes every character a moron just so the plot doesn't fall apart. It's laughable how many bad decisions every character has to make just so the writers can get to the ending they wanted. It was so unrealistic. Then they try to humanize the antagonist as if she had any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Bad writing. Decent visuals. Overall a major waste of time.

A movie with a decently interesting opener ruined by catering to the declining attention spans of TikTok and social media users. Instead of building up the 2 new characters, they immediately need us to think of the as bad guys so the little kid is mangling a cat immediately without introduction and the foster mother is even worse, showing her to be immediately unhinged and not normal at all. And the movie just gets worse. Its their first day there and the kids are getting hammered with their foster mother? The song scene also lasted too long, and was clearly designed for low attention span people 'yay music yay karaoke!'. The problem when a movie lays out every single card immediately is that it only allows for cheap and lazy plot twists and also destroys any chance of character development. It really is brutal that we live in this current generation where filmmakers have to make a choice, make simple 2-D films for the average person- overweight, low IQ, low attention span, poor self esteem, or make far less money by making a competent film. The director here went for the former, and it's barely watchable. The film is so lazy they didn't even 'waste time' doing a 2 minute scene with the father to plant half of a seed of us caring they died. So I'm sure they will do the same thing as these other films where they do stupid flashbacks with him.