Bring Her Back (2025)

The directors working in the swimming pool. So everybody gets wet.

Plot of Bring Her Back: After their father brained himself accidentally in the shower half-siblings Andy and Piper are shifted off to a foster home run by Laura, who had previously worked in the foster care administration and was therefore trusted. Piper is partially sighted and relies on Andy a lot. Laura is already looking after mute boy who looks as if he is about six years old. Everything in the house is just bit off key. Ollie, the boy, is particularly weird and after Andy attempts to bond with him, offering a bit of melon on a knife, Ollie takes the knife and starts cutting his teeth out. Desperately Andy drags him off towards hospital but when they cross a line, part of a circle round the house. Ollie screams, but manages to say ‘help me’. Laura returns and smooths things over, but we see that she has the body of a girl, her daughter, in a freezer and that she is viewing rituals involving what seems to be cannibalism on grainy videos. Rain falls continuously, gradually filling the derelict swimming pool. When Laura begins to create the impression that Andy is unstable, by hitting Piper when she is asleep things will come to a head.

Content: No sex or nudity, but one evening when Laura and Andy get drunk, although Piper does not like the taste. We are given the impression that Andy was beaten by his father but Piper was treated well. Right from the start Ollie is weird and only gets weirder. He might possibly injure the cat if left with it, but Laura locks him in his room. Ollie escapes by breaking the window and gets out, cutting his arms.  The body of Laura’s daughter is in the shed in the freezer. Andy is tricked, Laura pouring her own urine on him, and hitting Piper in the eye while she is asleep, accusing Andy. There is blood. Andy manages to escape and drives to the foster case centre, recruiting Wendy to come and have a look. He also sees a poster for a missing boy. It is Ollie. But Laura learns that they are is coming. Oh dear!

A View: This outing was generally well thought of and Sally Hawkins lauded for her presentation as the demented a dangerous Laura. I have to say that I now know more about the film than I did when I watched it, so maybe I was not paying attention or it was one of those scripts which are absolutely clear to the writers, but not quite so clear to the viewers. And honestly even with this additional info I am not sure that the plot worked completely. Bit of a spoiler. It turns out that Laura had got guidance from the video and had managed to conjour a demon, now inhabiting the body of Ollie. Despite its failings it is an unsettling film well worth the price of admission to our cinema in Madrid.

Fun Fact: I note that I have said in my review of the Philippou’s first film, ‘Talk To Me’, that by the end of the film they seem to have thrown away their rule book. The same might be said of this outing.