Bring Her Back (2025) Reviews: What Critics Said

Editorial note: This is a roundup of published criticism of Bring Her Back. Celluloid has not screened the film for this piece, and it carries no Celluloid rating. The critics are named and linked under Sources.

Is Bring Her Back worth watching?

Most critics say yes, with a firm warning: the Philippou brothers’ second feature was widely described as deeply disturbing, and Sally Hawkins’s performance drew near-universal praise. Reviewers admired its slow-building dread, its young leads and its seriousness about grief. The main reservations concern plot logic, loose ends and a finale that several found weaker than what comes before.

What is Bring Her Back about?

Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret. Billy Barratt plays Andy, Sora Wong plays his visually impaired sister Piper, Sally Hawkins plays their new carer Laura, and Jonah Wren Phillips plays Oliver. The film is directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, the Australian brothers behind Talk to Me, from a screenplay by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman. It was released in 2025 and runs 104 minutes. Release details and where to watch are on the Bring Her Back film page.

What critics praised

Ian Freer of Time Out called Hawkins’s performance a tour de force, noting how she lets pain and malevolence show through without overplaying either. He credited the directors with a real gift for believable teenage characters, found the chemistry between Barratt and Wong tender and affecting, and praised the patient build-up of dread over cheap jump scares. He also singled out the sound design, the score and the practical prosthetic effects, and saw the brothers as fresh voices in a crowded genre.

Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman described a majorly disturbing horror film that genuinely gets under the skin. He thought Hawkins spectacular as a grinning, domestic figure of menace, found Barratt achingly vulnerable and real, and valued Wong’s authentic presence. He admired the directors’ impressionistic approach, which in his view chases a sensation of malevolent shock rather than a neat story.

In Empire, Jamie Graham judged the film an accomplished and disturbing piece of work in which the brothers clear the hurdle of a difficult second film with visual flair. He found Hawkins on startling form and praised the film’s sense of suffocating menace.

Ross Bonaime of Collider ranked it among the best horror films of the year and considered it more devastating than Talk to Me. He praised the way the directors fuse tragedy with fear, and found Hawkins’s balance of sadness and horror exceptional.

Where critics were divided

Tim Grierson of Screen Daily offered the most measured view. He shared the admiration for Hawkins, whose unnerving naturalism he felt keeps viewers uneasy even in her warmest scenes, and he praised Aaron McLisky’s cinematography and the film’s claustrophobic horror. But he considered the treatment of Piper needlessly manipulative, arguing that she functions more as a prop than a character, and he felt that rickety twists and an underwhelming finale undercut the stronger early stretches. He also found some of its handling of grief familiar.

Gleiberman, for all his enthusiasm, wished the film were tidier and more logical, and was frustrated that several of its stranger elements go unexplained. Graham expected some viewers to be bothered by logic holes and narrative loose ends. Freer felt the resolution does not entirely satisfy, a flaw he also saw in the brothers’ debut. Bonaime’s only real complaint was that the film sometimes settles into genre patterns before breaking from them.

Who is it for?

This is for viewers who want horror that is grim, emotionally raw and physically graphic. It is rated R in the US and 18 in the UK, and Graham warned that its disturbing imagery involving children could test even seasoned horror fans. Anyone who admired Talk to Me should find the same mix of grief and shock here, taken further. More titles are gathered under horror, and Weapons is another 2025 horror film about children in peril.

The critical verdict

The critics here agree that Bring Her Back is a punishing, frightening film and that Sally Hawkins is its greatest asset. Most consider it a confident second feature from the Philippou brothers. The shared reservations are about story mechanics rather than mood: unanswered questions, looser logic and an ending that, for Grierson in particular, does not live up to the build-up.