phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2025

Bring Her Back



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2025
Runtime: 1h 44m
Country: Australia
Language: English, Russian
Genre Tags: Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Trigger Warning: The Movie! Adults hurting children, adults gaslighting children, adults psychologically manipulating children, animals in peril. Manages the remarkable feat of sustaining rising tension for 90 minutes, punctuated by uncomfortably graphic violence. The only movie that made me wince this year. The kids are no acting slouches, but Sally Hawkins is a force of nature and sells every conflicted, horrible emotion going through her brain. A domestic abuse possession story with the knob turned to 10 and snapped off. More of a visceral experience than a movie.


Outside Reviews:

Monica Castillo
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Despite its propensity for shock factor and supernatural child endangerment over narrative cohesion, "Bring Her Back" is fairly successful at dropping jaws (especially when it comes to one particularly bloody knife scene), and the suspense is sustained throughout the movie. Hawkins is eerily great as the foster mom with questionable intentions, riffing on the warmth of her "Paddington" matriarch and twisting it into something deviously sinister and tragic. It may not meet the high watermark of the brothers' first outing, but "Bring Her Back" is still quite the wild ride and shows the pair still have plenty of spooky tricks up their bloody sleeves.


Matt Schimkowitz
Grade: B - Sally Hawkins leads a visceral domestic nightmare in order to Bring Her Back

The Philippous escalate the tension carefully, choosing the right moments to tear into their characters. Bring Her Back becomes increasingly brutal as it veers into its last act, but it also adds too many swerves, layering up twists that don't amount to much. Some land better than others, but the movie works best on a visceral and emotional level, carried by Hawkins' mania and the textured sound design that feels like pouring glass in the ear canal. 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.