Review: Bring Her Back (2025), The Year’s Best Trauma Horror

Australia has delivered some of the best horror films of the past two decades. The Loved Ones (2012), The Babadook (2014), and You Won’t Be Alone (2022) are just a few that come to mind. Our Aussie brethren delivered yet another beautiful and brutal horror film with (2025), directed by the Philippou brothers. Starring Sally Hawkins as one of her most devious and tragically misguided characters yet, Bring Her Back is equal parts trauma dump, occult horror, and a statement on our collective failure to protect vulnerable children.

After discovering his dead father in the shower, teenager Andy (Billy Barratt) is taken with his younger, blind sister, Piper (Sora Wong), to live with Laura (Sally Hawkins). Laura is, in no uncertain terms, strange. She lives with a young mute boy, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who appears to be another foster child under her care.

Despite not fully trusting her, Andy reveals to Laura that his father had been abusive to him and had always favored Piper. Laura recounts losing her own daughter, who was blind, in an accident in the pool behind the house.

On his second day in the house, while Laura and Piper are away, Andy attempts to communicate with Oliver. He tries to get Oliver to write on a notepad, only to have Oliver savagely bite down on a kitchen knife…