Sally Hawkins Builds A Ritual Of Grief Around A Daughter’s Death In ‘Bring Her Back’

Bring Her Back is a 2025 Australian supernatural folk horror film that buries its slow-burn dread beneath a family tragedy nobody wants to look at twice. Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, the movie follows Andy and Piper, two step-siblings whose father dies of cancer, and the foster mother who takes them in and turns them into pawns in a ritual. It is a grim, claustrophobic chamber piece that trusts the audience to sit still and wait for the nightmare to arrive.

Billy Barratt plays Andy, a guilt-ridden 17-year-old boy, and Sora Wong plays Piper, his visually impaired younger stepsister. Sally Hawkins plays Laura, the grieving mother who is also fostering a pre-teen boy named Oliver. Jonah Wren Phillips plays Oliver / Connor Bird, Laura’s foster son, and Sally-Anne Upton plays Wendy, Andy and Piper’s social worker. Stephen Phillips plays Phil, Andy and Piper’s deceased father, and Mischa Heywood plays Cathy, Laura’s deceased 12-year-old daughter.

Trailer, via A24.

The Foster Home That Hides A Secret

The setup is simple and cruel. Andy and Piper lose their father, Phil, who has been undergoing treatment for cancer. They are sent to live with Laura, a former counselor described as eccentric. Laura also fosters Oliver, a boy who has stopped talking since the death of his sister, Cathy, who was blind and drowned in their backyard pool.

Laura’s favoritism toward Piper sets the tension early. Andy notices strange behavior from both Laura and Oliver, and the film lets that suspicion simmer before it boils over. Laura steals a lock of hair from Phil’s corpse at the funeral, and later mimics a ritual from a VHS tape to return Oliver to his mute state after Andy encourages him to write on a notepad.

Hawkins Carries The Weight Of Grief

Hawkins is the engine of the film. She plays Laura as a woman who has lost her child and now holds onto another family as if they were her own. Her grief is not theatrical; it is quiet, controlled, and constantly shifting under the surface. When she reflects on Cathy’s death and says she would do anything to hear her call her “mum” one last time, the film earns its tagline: “Family requires sacrifices.”

The supporting cast is solid but secondary. Barratt anchors the younger half of the story, playing Andy’s guilt and resentment with a rawness that grounds the film’s surreal turns. Phillips is effective as Oliver, though his arc is thinner than Hawkins’s. The rest of the ensemble fills out the world without demanding attention.

The Ritual At The Center Of It All

The core of Bring Her Back is Laura’s ritual, and the film spends its runtime building toward it. Andy sees an apparition of Phil telling him, “She’ll die in the rain,” and the film leaves the meaning ambiguous until the final stretch. The ritual involves feeding the corpse of a deceased person to a possessed host, who then regurgitates it.

The film is not subtle about this, and it does not need to be. The horror here is not jump scares or gore, but the idea of a mother who has stopped mourning and started sacrificing. Laura’s actions are monstrous, but the film understands why she does them, and that understanding is what makes the ending land.

The White Border Around The Property

The film uses Laura’s property as a kind of prison. There is a white border that circles her land, and crossing it means leaving. When Andy carries Oliver across it to get help, Oliver convulses violently and utters “help me.” The border is a visual shorthand for the isolation that traps everyone inside the house.

This is a small touch, but it works. The film is mostly confined to interior spaces — the house, the shed, the basement — and the border reminds the audience that there is a way out, even as the characters are pushed back in.

The Hallucination And The Concussion

Andy’s hallucinations are the film’s most effective scare. He slips in the shower and awakens in the hospital with a concussion, but the vision of Phil warning him about the rain stays with him. This is the film’s central mystery, and it is not resolved until the very end.

The film’s pacing is deliberate, almost painfully so. It takes its time establishing the characters’ relationships, and the payoff comes late enough that some viewers might lose patience. But the payoff is worth waiting for. The final act ties the hallucination, the ritual, and the sacrifice together in a way that feels earned rather than tacked on.

Comparing The Two Families

This table shows the structural symmetry of the film. Both families have lost a child, and both families are willing to make a terrible bargain to bring that child back. The difference is that Laura’s family is the one doing the sacrificing, while Andy and Piper are the ones being sacrificed.

Where The Film Falls Short

Bring Her Back is not perfect. The middle section drags, and some of the supernatural elements feel under-explained. The film leans heavily on Laura’s backstory, but it never fully commits to explaining how she knows the ritual or why she believes it will work.

The film also struggles with pacing. The first half moves slowly, and the reveal of Cathy’s corpse in the freezer feels rushed compared to the careful build-up around Laura’s grief. These are minor complaints, but they keep the film from reaching greatness.

A Grim Family Portrait

Bring Her Back is a grim, assured piece of horror. It is not interested in cheap thrills, and it is not afraid to sit with uncomfortable truths about loss and grief. Hawkins gives a career-best performance, and the film’s central idea — that family requires sacrifices — is rendered with genuine conviction.

The film’s weakness is its pacing, but its strength is its willingness to commit to its own darkness. It is a film about a woman who has stopped mourning and started sacrificing, and it does not flinch from the consequences of that decision.

Bring Her Back is a worthy addition to the horror canon, a film that understands the cost of love and the price of loss. It is not a perfect film, but it is a powerful one. The ending lands with a weight that few horror films manage, and it leaves the audience thinking long after the credits roll.

Australian cinema · film review · horror · Sally Hawkins · supernatural