Bring Her Back, the sophomore feature film from Danny and Michael Philippou, ends on a far more somber note than even their critically acclaimed debut project, Talk to Me. Here’s how the new horror flick comes to its devastating conclusion devoid of hope.
With their 2022 breakout hit, the Philippou brothers injected a dose of Aussie flair into the horror genre. It was brutal, at times it was harrowing, but through it all, you couldn’t look away from the violent delights of Talk to Me.
Following up on that box office spectacle is no small feat. Rather than rushing right to the sequel, the twins took a detour and veered down an even more emotionally wrought path. Bring Her Back takes the same chilling tone and blood-curdling gore but frames it in a tale of domestic abuse and generational trauma.
We got to see it at an early preview screening here in Australia, and while it may not be as scary, it’s certainly just as unsettling. Watching Sally Hawkins as Laura, following through with her wildest machinations, is often spine-tingling stuff, but of course, it can’t all go to plan. Here’s how it all unfurls and in the end, unravels in her very arms.
It should go without saying, but major spoiler warning from this point forward. If you haven’t yet seen the film, we advise going in with as little information as possible.
Andy’s heroism isn’t enough
From his first day under Laura’s care, 17-year-old Andy was suspicious. Something just wasn’t quite right about his new home and its inhabitants. As we quickly find out, his hunch was obviously correct.
It all comes to a head, in typical grotesque fashion, when Andy tries to help Oliver. Off in town for the day, Laura leaves Oliver locked inside. Noticing this, Andy frees the younger child under her care and attempts to connect with him.
Offering up some food, the considerate gesture goes awry as Ollie forgets basic culinary courtesies. Attempting to eat a knife whole, Ollie mangles his mouth in a brutally disturbing sequence that had many moviegoers in our preview screening walking to the nearest bathroom.
Attempting to get the young child to a hospital, Andy then drags Ollie outside of the home’s circle. What’s so special about this circle, you ask? Well, we don’t exactly get all the answers, but it seems this circle keeps a demonic presence trapped within its boundaries.
When taken beyond its ‘safezone’, so to speak, the demonic entity inside of Oliver begins to lose its control. “Help me,” we hear the child say, uttering his first words on camera in a moment of sheer fright.
Oliver, who we come to learn is actually Connor, is forcibly made into a host for a demonic being.
Andy seeks to do just that, heading back to the social worker facility and demanding to speak to Wendy, the employee who sent him and his step-sister Piper to live with Laura in the first place. Not believing his stories about Laura’s abuses, Wendy refuses to call for police and instead insists on paying a visit to her old pal Laura herself.
While all seemed hunky dory at first glance, Wendy soon notices Laura bleeding. The jig is up, but the social worker isn’t able to flee and call for help. Before Wendy and Andy can escape, Laura drives her car straight into them at top speed. Wendy dies on impact, and Andy is left gravely wounded.
Laura, wholly committed to her insane act, follows through. She drowns Andy in a puddle of rainwater before returning inside to round out an unholy ritual.
Hell breaks loose
By this point, Ollie – well, the demon possessing Ollie, a child we now know by his actual name of Connor – has finished his work. To enact the ritual, the otherworldly being had to munch down on the deceased. Ollie obliged, eating a healthy dose of Cathy’s corpse in the freezer out back.
On the verge of popping, his human body has grown so full, all that remains is for Laura to do her part. The final act is to replicate the death of the one she wants brought back, her daughter, Cathy.
“I’m gonna drown you in the pool,” Laura says sickeningly to Piper, who just came to realize her step-brother and closest friend, Andy, had been killed.
A24A brutal car crash gives us one of the more shocking deaths in the film.
While Laura dragged Piper into the pool and held her underwater for a decent chunk of time, she couldn’t bring herself to finish the job. Based on the VHS tapes we witnessed earlier, had she completed this final step, and Ollie vomited enough soul essence back into Cathy, it technically would have worked. We saw a woman brought back to life in the handcam footage, at the very least.
As Piper lets out one last harrowing shriek for her “mum,” however, it snaps Laura back to reality. She realizes in that moment she’s completely lost her way and that she couldn’t murder another scared, innocent victim.
Letting go of hope
Releasing Piper from her grip, Laura well and truly shatters. Overcome with sorrow, she remains in the pool while Piper runs away.
Despite one last fright from the demon child, Piper gets loose and finds help. Being picked up by helpful strangers, we see Ollie looking on from atop a hill. In what seems like a final moment for the demon and a new start for the 10-year-old boy, it’s as though he’s happy the ritual failed and Piper fled, despite the physical pain it’s causing him in the moment.
Now well and truly free, we catch up with Piper in the backseat of the stranger’s car. Shedding a tear after what can only be described as the most traumatic few weeks a kid could possibly endure, we get a callback to an earlier conversation with her step-brother.
Early into the film, Andy tries to comfort Piper after the death of his father and her stepfather. When we die, “we’re not burned or buried, we just catch a flight,” he tells her.
In this closing moment, Piper hears a plane soaring overhead.
A24In the end, Laura just couldn’t bring herself to complete the final step of the twisted ritual.
Cutting back to the scene of the hellacious crimes, the final shot of Bring Her Back is a dire one. Laura, either having drowned herself or merely succumbed to blood loss from a wound on her arm incurred by the Ollie-shaped demon, is seen lying in the pool, cuddling up to Cathy’s mutilated remains.
The story ends not with a hint of optimism or hope for the future, but with an overwhelming sense of dread. Andy’s death was for naught. The torture Connor (Ollie) endured was ultimately fruitless. And the unceasing trauma Piper now has to live with can never be forgotten.
Perhaps the only solace is in knowing Laura can no longer harm children in Adelaide. Well, at least that’s what we think. Who knows what remains of the ‘not a cult’ cult.
