‘Bring Her Back’ Review: Sally Hawkins Could Be This Year’s Best Villain

Those fortunate enough to have caught Danny and Michael Philippou’s (aka RackaRacka of YouTube horror comedy fame) first feature, Talk to Me, should be intimately familiar with the sorts of cringe-inducing terror these two are capable of stirring up. On the heels of their first, which so smartly combined Millennial/ Gen Z party experiences with that of overwhelming horrors, comes a follow-up that seems a more confident and self-assured approach to a scary story.

This time, their leads are still troubled youth in Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), newly orphaned half-siblings who experienced the grisly death of their ill father. As Andy is just shy of eighteen, the two are left to live with Laura (Sally Hawkins), a quirky social worker who seems zealous about Piper’s arrival. Spooking Andy with her overbearing nature and odd approach to familial relationships, Laura seems to be concocting a strange way to isolate the siblings in order to have more dominion over Piper, something that becomes increasingly more sinister as she seems to be building up to her master plan. House rules are odd, their de facto sibling, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) is odder, and things reach a fever pitch when Andy starts to push back at Laura’s bizarre whims.

There is no shortage of the heavy grey dread we saw in Talk to Me. The entire tone is like a long cut of the opening scene of Midsommar and the movie so comfortably nestles into it like the world’s scratchiest couch. Few would argue this is a comfort movie, as it seems to completely revel in crafting a specific discomfort, not just in its usual scares but with things like harsh yellow vomit or blades scraping between teeth. The fellas are masters in crafting horrific imagery, but what I appreciate about their second outing is that it feels more focused and direct. Where Talk to Me was abstract or had elements of unreliable visions, Bring Her Back is linear and human, which begets a tighter narrative.

The human villain of this is Laura, a horrifying nightmare of a mad matriarch bolstered by the committed performance of Hawkins. She’s bizarre, unstable, focused, and meek all in appropriate measures to believably craft a woman who would be able to gain trust, love, and ire. In her most deranged moments, she commits to her villainous aura while still carrying herself like a slight woman whose hair and accessories are too large for her petite frame. In ways, she is evocative of Annie Wilkes or Minnie Castevet (of Misery and Rosemary’s Baby respectively) as they gaslight and torment their marks as part of a grander vision. But she’s more pathetic and desperate than a character like Minnie, as at her core, she is a grieving mother who has been broken to the point of embracing a willingness to bring torment for her own pleasure.

This nightmare fuel from the dudes who seem to see directly into your nightmares is sparkly for embracing a specific dreadful tone and wrapping it around such a mature narrative through the eyes of youth. Displacing their protagonists gives them no safe haven, forcing them to begrudgingly hand power to a woman with sinister intentions. But even that isn’t disorienting enough for the pair of directors; they use their signature horrific imagery to make sure you leave with your shoulders tensed.

Bring Her Back hits theaters May 30, 2025